Michael Paine

"Customs camps"

2006-02-07T12:37:00.000-06:00

Customs `camps' cause for concern

Hmm... I can see it now...

"Bill, we need somewhere to put these people. We need to concentrate them into one location, preferably into some kind of easily buildable camp. A camp where we can concentrate them... yes, what should we call these? How about 'happy fun time facilities'?"

Yet another chemical plant explosion

2006-02-01T21:56:00.000-06:00

The first of the year to my knowledge....

Two critical following N.C. chemical plant explosion

And who said "going postal" was a thing of the past? This is America! We're all about retro

Vacation is over

2006-01-30T11:37:00.000-06:00

Well, I'm back from my extended vacation, and the world looks as crazed as ever.

The large-scale support of Hamas in the recent Palestinian elections was yet another opportunity for hypocracy by world leaders.

Rice Says Allies Oppose Aid to Hamas Gov't

"Everybody is saying exactly the same thing," Rice said amid
meetings with other diplomats on Hamas' startling election victory last week and
its impact on Middle East peacemaking efforts. "There has got to be a peaceful
road ahead. ... You cannot be on one hand dedicated to peace and on the other
dedicated to violence. Those two things are irreconcilable."

Of course, this statement isn't ironic in any sense of the word. Am I the only one who finds it funny that someone representing a country that rutinely commits overt and covert acts of aggression against other countries is so concerned with Hamas' commitment to peace? Or, perhaps she's saying that, in consequence, the United States is not dedicated to peace, and therefore Hamas can go ahead and do whatever it wants?

But who knows, I get confused easily.

An interesting revelation

2005-12-12T14:08:00.000-06:00

It looks like my suspicions reguarding the UN report on Syra's involvement in the Hariri probe may have been more or less correct...

The Syrian Gambit Unravels

Middle East Hopscotch

2005-12-11T07:29:00.000-06:00

Israel readies forces for strike on nuclear Iran

Everyone seems certain another war in the middle east is coming soon, but speculation shifts daily from Syria to Iran and back again. It would almost make a kind of twisted logic if the plan all along was for the United States to attack Syria, one of Israel's neighbors, and for Israel to attack Iran, which borders our troops in Iraq. That way, according to this logic, Israel wouldn't face a war on its border where Israeli troops would be pinned down, and they could free up US airpower for use in Syria by striking Iran for us. Of course, this is all pure insanity.

No one in their right mind could any longer deny the holy war being waged by the fundimentalists in Washington, Tel Aviv, and the mountains of Afghanistan. The common people caught in the middle are only now awakening to the obvious. Soon the entire middle east will be a battlefield, and the apocalyptic visions of the "holy book thumpers" will be realized. After that, who knows what will happen.

But, my friends, I do believe it's in our power to stop this. We can still vote people out of office. We can still protest. But do I believe that the American people have the will to act? No. I would be very surprised if our current course reversed itself in the near future. Call me cynical if you want.

Lets Not Forget: Bush Planned Iraq 'Regime Change' Before Becoming President

An illuminating glipse of the war

2005-11-29T19:43:00.000-06:00

The View from the Front Lines

"Since July, 1 in 3 platoon members has been killed or hurt. "All of my squad leaders and section leaders have been wounded," says the platoon leader, 2nd Lieut. Joe Walker, a South Carolinian who volunteered to fight after 9/11. "For a while, our unit was fighting at less than 70%, and we're still below 60% on our vehicles--so many Bradleys have been blown up."

For weeks the 2-69, an entire armored battalion, was cut off from other American forces. The roads in and out of its base were saturated with improvised explosive devices, says Captain Chas Cannon. At one stage, there were 100 explosions a week. "You expected to get hit ... possibly several times," says Cannon. The roads were closed; some food was rationed. But with aggressive combat operations, sniper assaults and the building of precarious outposts, the 2-69 has regained control of the city's main artery, "Route Michigan," the troops' lifeline. "

More bad news

2005-11-25T18:28:00.000-06:00

War's strain wearing on Army troops, tools

""The future of our military is at risk," Murtha said. "Our military and their families are stretched thin. Many say that the Army is broken. Some of our troops are on their third deployment. Recruitment is down, even as our military has lowered its standards.""

"The war in Iraq is taking the biggest toll on military equipment since the Vietnam War, after which the Pentagon retooled its arsenal during the massive military buildup of the 1980s. Fixing and replacing Army equipment alone could run from $60 billion to $100 billion, according to retired general Paul Kern, a senior consultant to the Cohen Group and the just-retired head of Army Materiel Command. The total cost for wear-and-tear on U.S. equipment is unclear because it is not known how long American troops will be needed in Iraq and Afghanistan."

"Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., said last week that the United States went into Iraq with too few troops and doesn't have sufficient forces to maintain current levels. "We are grinding down our force structure to the point where we have no force structure," Hagel said."

A bleak assessment part 2

2005-11-12T21:36:00.000-06:00

Mounting evidence backs my opinion that the war in Iraq is eroding our military capabilities and leaving the United States vaunerable to attack...

U.S. 'can't maintain Iraq troop levels'

Do as we say, not as we do

2005-11-08T20:40:00.000-06:00

US forces 'used chemical weapons' during assault on city of Fallujah

We do not torture: Bush

What is a lie? According to the correspondence theory of truth, a lie would be a statement about a thing that does not accurately correspond to that thing in reality, deliberately meant to decieve the listener.

Does President Bush's statement: "Anything we do to that end in this effort, any activity we conduct, is within the law. We do not torture." correspond to reality?

When he says "we do not torture," what does torture mean? According to The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, torture is "Infliction of severe physical pain as a means of punishment or coercion: An instrument or a method for inflicting such pain: Excruciating physical or mental pain."

According to the US army's own admission, this has occured. (And if "we" ~read: our soldiers in Iraq~ do everything within the law, why are these Rangers being prosicuted?)

If the common lay person can do a quick search on the Internet and discover overwhelming evidence of the abuse of prisoners by US armed forces, much of which comes from the US Department of Defense itself, surely the President of the United States can too. So, it's hard for me to believe that President Bush is ignorant of these acts of torture by our armed forces.

This leads me to conclude that either Bush is completely blind and deaf, or his statement "We do not torture" was designed to delibretly decieve the listener into thinking something contrary to reality.

In point of fact, President Bush is a liar, ie. someone who lies. Where's the impeachment trial for that?

Britain's former ambassador to the US speaks

2005-11-07T12:54:00.000-06:00

A political war that backfired

So what, two-and-a-half years after the invasion, do the president
and prime minister have to do now? "I think the US and ourselves are on the
horns of an absolutely impossible dilemma," he says. He opposes an early pullout
of US and British troops. Abandoning the task of rebuilding the country would
leave "the relatives of at least 2,000 American servicemen and 98 British
servicemen with a legitimate question about what they died for".

But he accepts that the task of rebuilding may now be impossible.
"There is no doubt that the presence of American and British troops to a degree
motivates the insurgency. So this is agonising for Bush and I think it is
agonising for Blair, all of us really." He also dismisses the prime minister's
claim that the war has not exposed Britain to terrorist attacks. "There is
plenty of evidence around at the moment that home-grown terrorism was partly
radicalised and fuelled by what is going on in Iraq," he says. "There is no way
we can credibly get up and say it has nothing to do with it. Don't tell me that
being in Iraq has got nothing to do with it. Of course, it does. The issue is it
is part of the price we have to pay and should be paying for the removal of
Saddam Hussein and at the moment the jury is out."

The Logic of the Iraq War, part 2

2005-11-02T13:14:00.000-06:00

Some argued that even if Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction wasn't certain, the possibility was enough to justify an invasion. In a sense, they were arguing that Iraq might have weapons of mass destruction, implying, by default, that they might not. In other words: either Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, or it doesn't. In logic, we translate this as (P v ~P) This is known as a tautology, because it's a statement that is always true. When we plug this into our argument, like so:

1. (P->Q)
2. (P v ~P)
------------
3. Q

the argument comes out invalid. Why? Because premise #2 has given us no useful information. A person could use this invalid argument to justify the invasion of any country, because (P v ~P) will always be true for any given situation. Either Sweden has weapons of mass destruction, or it doesn't, for example. It's certainly possible for any country to have weapons of mass destruction, but does that justify invading them?

A person might then argue that Iraq has a history of using weapons of mass destruction aggressively (much like France and Germany in WW1, Britain in 1920 against the Kurds, and the United States in WW2) So, let's add a third premise to our argument.

1. If Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, then the United States should invade Iraq.
2. Either Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, or it doesn't.
3. Iraq has a history of using weapons of mass destruction aggressively.
---------------------------------
4. The United States should invade Iraq.

or, in logical notation

1. (P->Q)
2. (P v ~P)
3. S
----------
4. Q

After constructing our truth table, we see that this argument is also invalid. It seems that premise #3, our new premise, has no effect on the outcome of the validity or truth value of our argument. This is because premise #2 weakens the argument to the point that it would cause any variations to fail our test of validity. It is simply a logical mistake to make one of the foundations of our conclusion based on the possibility of the existence of something, no matter how accustomed we are to hearing it.

Furthermore, premise #3, although it may sound connected in natural English, doesn't have any logical connection to our conclusion. We could have plugged any new sentence phrase into our argument and gotten the same result, like "3. Iraqi men have beards" or "3. Iraqi art is nice." Any of those sentences requires the creation of a new sentence letter, but have no bearing on the outcome of our test for validity. On the surface, this seems silly. Why shouldn't Iraq's past use of weapons of mass destruction have any bearing on our present situation? The explination in logical notation is simple.

Premise #3 has no bearing on the present argument because it is unrelated to any other premises or the conclusion. If, on the other hand, premise #1 was reworded to say "If Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, and a history of using weapons of mass destruction agressively, then the United States should invade Iraq," or ((P^S)-> Q) in notation, premise #3 becomes important to the argument, but still wouldn't cause the argument to become valid, because of our tautology.

The Logic of the Iraq War, part 1

2005-11-01T19:29:00.000-06:00

Before the United States invaded Iraq, the White House made the following argument, cleaned up for ease of logical translation:

If Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, then the US should invade Iraq. Iraq does have weapons of mass destruction. Therefore, the US should invade Iraq.

Putting that in logical notation, we see the following conditional argument:

1. (P->Q)
2. P
----------
3. Q

And, using a truth table (a universally accepted test of validity) we see that the argument is clearly valid, meaning that every time both of the premises are true, the conclusion is also true. There is no case where both of the premises are true but the conclusion is false. That would be a validity counter example, and mean that the argument is invalid. So, there is no way we can attack the validity of the argument above, if both of the premises are true.

But what we can do is attack the premises, by denying their truthhood. Suppose we say that the second premise is not in fact true, and claim the opposite. As follows: If Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, then the US should invade Iraq. Iraq does not have weapons of mass destruction. Therefore, the US should invade Iraq.

1. (P->Q)
2. ~P
----------
3. Q

Here, in our truth table, we can see that there is an instance where both the premises are true and the conclusion false; giving us the validity counter example to show that argument is invalid. Of course, the argument above should sound invalid to any reasonable person. Never the less, the case could be made that the knowledge about the truth and falsehood of premise #2 was lacking before the US invaded Iraq. In that instance, premise #2 could be again considered true, and this time we could attack premise #1. Suppose we denied that the US should invade Iraq if they had weapons of mass destruction, as a pacifist, non-interventionalist, or just someone opposed to the idea would, while keeping the same conclusion as before.

It is not the case that if Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, then the US should invade Iraq. Iraq does have weapons of mass destruction. Therefore, the US should invade Iraq.

1. ~(P->Q)
2. P
----------
3. Q

This argument also produces a validity counterexample, making it an invalid argument. Even without symbolic logic and truth tables, the two arguments above should seem instinctively wrong. But not all arguments for the invasion of Iraq have been that simple. With the revelation that Iraq did not in fact have the alleged weapons of mass destruction, new justifications for the invasion have arisen.

Next: Part 2- Possible Weapons of Mass Destruction and more complex arguments

It took a disaster to finally get it

2005-10-26T09:55:00.000-05:00

"This is incredible. I just cannot believe it," said Sanchez, 47. "I've seen this before. Miami officials said they are prepared, but they are not. Everything is a lie. We got all this technology. We've gone to the moon, but they [officials] cannot have their little act together."

In Wilma's wake, relief falls short, tempers shorter

The obsequious US media and Manufacturing a new war

2005-10-22T16:13:00.000-05:00

The obsequious US media

It's great that our media focuses on the "elections" in Iraq, while padding them with stories like these:

U.S. Troops Maintain High Morale in Iraq
U.S. Forces Kill 20 Insurgents in Iraq

Meanwhile the US military was able to suppress information surrounding the deaths of 4 US contractors in Iraq for a month until the British Daily Telegraph broke this story:

US troops fighting losing battle for Sunni triangle

At least the Washington Post had the decency to report this:

Hughes Misreports Iraqi History

Maybe there's some hope, but I doubt it.

Manufacturing a new war

The UN report on the Hariri investigation has come out and is available here. This report has some strange conclusions. Amung them was this list of "key UN findings" by the BBC:

1. (the) Assassins had considerable resources and capabilities
2. Evidence suggests both Syria and Lebanon were involved
3. Crime was prepared over several months
4. Hariri's movements and itineraries were monitored
5. Highly unlikely Syrian or Lebanese intelligence were not aware of assassination plot

On the surface, you might be inclined to think, as US officials would like you to, that the report is a damning inditement against Syrian involvement in the plot to kill Rafik Hariri. Going back in time a bit... If you recall, Ahmad Abu Adas, speaking on behalf of a group called "Victory and Jihad" claimed responsibility and said they assassinated Hariri for his close ties to the Saudi Government. However, Lebenese opposition groups and US officials were quick to ignore these facts and point the finger at Syria.

Basically, the report concludes that because the crime had to be prepared over several months, Ahmad Abu Adas and his group remain elusive, and Syrian and Lebanese intelligence agents should have known about the group's activities, Syrian and Lebanese intelligence agents must have been behind the bombing.

That's very much like saying that the US government was behind the Oklahoma City bombing because the FBI couldn't have been unaware of such a complex plot. (I think someone has said that)

Let me pose a few of my own conclusions.

It is possible for an individual, or small group of individuals, to create their own 'terror' group and commit organized attacks. Often, these are the groups that are the most elusive. Take the Symbionese Liberation Army and Theodore Kaczynski's "Freedom Club" for example.
It is possible for a country's agents to know nothing of the activities of private individuals, escpecially those who take deliberate measures not to be noticed.
It is possible, even more likely, for an individual of "limited intelligence" (as Ahmad Abu Adas was described in the report) to use violence to take revenge on a percieved enemy.

If anything, I'd say the report's conclusions about Syria's involvement are very, very shaky. It seems to grasp at straws and make unreasonable conclusions from scarce evidence, conclusions that point towards what they seem to want to believe. (the report directly links the assassination with Syria's involvement in Lebanon by talking about them side by side. It's not hard to see the bias here)

It seems very fishy indeed. I expected a little more from the UN.

A bleak assessment

2005-10-18T11:09:00.000-05:00

We're past 15,000 wounded in Iraq now (although about half of those have returned to duty). From what I've been told many of those would be dead if it weren't for our current medical technology. That makes the total casualties (including injured in accidents) around 22,000. Add to that the number of soldiers evacuated because of disease and you get around 33,000. The average number of soldiers in a US division is roughly 15,000 men (12-20,000 per division). That means that at least 2 full divisions worth of troops have been incapacitated in some way. That's not including those who are mentally scarred and are unable to effectively perform their role as soldiers.

In other news... Iraq Insurgents Seize Korean Aid Worth US$3.5 Million

Based on these numbers, the fact that the insugency doesn't seem to be going away any time soon, reports like this one, a recent assessment by the Committee on Armed Services, and the insistance by our leaders that we don't need any more troops in Iraq, I predict the near total erosion of our army in the Persian Gulf in the coming years, which will be accelerated if we have to fight some other country (Iran, Syria, etc)

This should not be surprising. It's a well established fact that the longer an army is at war, escpecially a "professional army", the more disorganized it becomes, if the long haul isn't well planned for. We see this time and again throughout history. (the disintegration of German army structure on the eastern front in WW2, for instance) In Iraq, it seems like there's a prevailing sense of a fantasy-land mentality.

Marine units found to lack equipment

The fact is, we only have so much equipment, and so much money to replace that equipment. Sure, we could always rush more troops to the front as fast as women back home can crank them out, but remember that this is not 1940, nor 1965. Our modern equipment is extremely expensive to produce. ($8 billion to rectify wear and tear alone, according to the report above) Where is all this money coming from? Also, that report doesn't assume the cost of a prolonged conflict. Those unpaid bills will continue to climb as long as the war continues, and the numbers on that graph to the right will continue to go down.

How long can that last with the White House ignoring reality and continuing to believe that everything is just fine, thus making no effort to rectify the situation?

Iraq War Myths, realities, and peace protest

2005-10-13T12:18:00.000-05:00

Good News, or Urban Legends?

CIA says Bush ignored prewar forecasts

I'm really getting tired of the news lately, and I feel like I'm beating the Iraq War horse to death, literally. Luckily, it's not in vain. More and more Americans are waking up to the reality of the hell they elected themselves into, and Bush's poll numbers are lower than ever. But poll numbers don't mean jack, escpecially when they can be taken from anywhere in the country the pollster wants and usually only contain around 1,000 participants.

What matters is action. The massive protest in Washington last month was a start, but "sitting for peace" won't bring about the end of a disasterous and misguided war. A letter was recently intercepted from the Al Qaeda leadership in Afghanistan to the Al Qaeda leadership in Iraq (if you believe it's authenticity). In it they talked about getting ready for any possible US withdrawl, and their plans afterwards, which included taking their war to other, secular Islamic countries.

I really hope it's not Bush created propiganda, because this letter, rather than providing a reason why we should "stay the course" in Iraq, only shows how the Iraq war put Al Qaeda one step closer to their goal. The pitifully small terrorist camp nestled in Kurdish Iraq before the start of the war was nothing compared to the number and organizational level of the "terrorists" now. Saddam would have never allowed such a base to exist in Iraq and threaten his rule, but without him, and with a weak puppet government, Al Qaeda can pretty much do whatever it wants, aside from having to dodge the occasional US offensive.

How did that relate to my earlier sentence about the need for action? Well, look what your "sitting for peace" allowed to happen. Did the peacenicks at the beginning really think they could stop the war from happening with paper mache puppets and peace drums? Because the peace movement lacks the courage to take their message to the streets with force behind it-- whether it be radio addresses, TV ads, civil disruption, voting in massive numbers, or whatever-- they allowed Bush to blunder into the Iraq War and make Al Qaeda more powerful than ever.

Way to go, guys. Yelling in your designated protest areas really did something...

Update: 5:49pm----

U.S. Accused of Making Up al-Qaida Letter

2005-10-11T14:17:00.000-05:00

Reading Hellenistic philosophy is like getting a booster shot of virile love for life. Where are people like that today? Why is anyone who siezes life and makes no apologies reviled by the masses? Why are men afraid to become great? "Everyone is equal before God" ---> that is the statment that killed giants.

More on this later...

Live from the war zone

2005-10-05T13:15:00.000-05:00

http://www.jihadunspun.com/intheatre_external.php?article=104658&list=/home.php&

The above is a video recorded by Al Qaida "in the land of the two rivers" of a Bradly Fighting Vehicle being hit by some kind of projectile (looked too big to be an RPG round?) Something you won't find on FOX news.

Also, the US is up to 1,942 dead- 14,902 wounded - and over 5,542 have been injured in accidents.

Over 3,300 US-trained Iraqi police/military have also been killed (2,000 of those this year alone). An estimated 25,323 Iraqi civilians have been killed since the start of the conflict.

To the right is a map from globalsecurity.org of areas in Iraq with heavy insurgent activity.

As you probably know, an offensive is underway in Western Iraq- "Operation River Gate", where Al Qaida recently siezed 5 towns along the Syrian border.

U.S. Tries to Take Towns From Insurgents

As before, the Mujihadeen seem to be able to slip from the US' fingertips, despite the high insurgent casualty count released by the Department of Defense.

"As with the earlier U.S. offensive — code named Iron Fist — it appeared many fighters may have slipped away beforehand."

Here is a good inside look at what's going on ->

Reporter gets inside look at insurgency

I wonder how much longer this cat and mouse game can go on

The drugs made me do it

2005-10-03T12:44:00.000-05:00

It's funny how we often blame inanimate objects for our problems, as though they somehow consciously willed problems upon us. "Guns don't kill people, I do" --- a famous statement, but one that holds true in a lot of situations.

An object, like a drug, has no intentional being. It is made of chemicals and causes specific chemical reactions in a user's body. It cannot "make" someone do something, as common language would describe it. "I hit that girl on the bike because I was high." "I slept with her because I was drunk." But my friend, the marijuana plant did not make you smoke it, nor did it compel you to get behind the wheel of the car.

These are decisions that we as human beings make. It's only after the negative consequences that we look around for something to deflect blame onto. Yes it's true that drugs--- all drugs--- impair or change our thought processes, but who was the one who decided to use them in the first place? Because of that, you have no one to blame but yourself.

If there was a situation where someone beat you over the head, tied you up, and injected heroine into you against your will, which then led to your lapse of judgment, maybe the case could be made that you had no control over your actions. But it still wouldn't be the drugs that compelled you- it would certainly be the one who forced them on you and goaded your drugged mind into actions you wouldn't have otherwise taken.

The whole logic behind the banning of drugs then is flawed, if not revealing of the root causes of the problem. Because either drugs are banned because they "make" people commit actions they wouldn't normally commit, or they're banned to keep them out of the hands of those that have no self control, implying that the government has no faith in the people that they can control their own actions. To legalize certain drugs would be giving people freedom to choose something that others find objectionable. Most, if not all, governments are afraid of that.

My friends, it was not the food that made you fat, nor the drugs that made you act a certain way. It was weakness, the inability to control your own actions that caused the negative consequences. But who today wants to hear such a thing?

The absurdity of freedom means that we must allow people to do things that others find objectionable, including the freedom to choose negative actions. But with this freedom comes an acknowledgment of personal responsibility. You were free to choose what you chose, no one compelled you, certainly not some inanimate object.

"I was only following orders" cannot be an excuse here. For who's orders were you following, the drugs? I have yet to see a drug that can talk, think, and break the will of a person. Those, my friends, are things we do to each other and ourselves only.

The Easy Path

2005-09-27T10:18:00.000-05:00

"...the role of the military is to fight and win war and, therefore, prevent war from happening in the first place. "
– George W. Bush

Bush eyes bigger military role in disasters

One of the most amazing things in the world is to see United States citizens in a crisis. Never have I seen people who talk so highly of freedom be so ready to give it up at a moment's notice whenever things get tough. The question is: what took us so long?

Everyone has known since the beginning of time that the less freedoms a society has, the safer it is. Modern facist governments experienced very little crime or unemployment, their economies boomed, the trains ran on time, and things seemed to get done in record time. Most educated people are aware of the fact that things just worked better in pre-war National Socialist Germany.

Want to eliminate all crime? Just monitor everything your citizens do! Put cameras up everywhere, put a cop on every street corner, have a network of citizen spies, force the poor to work in labor camps. It's easy! Countries have been doing it for centuries.

Want to get things done in a jiffy? Just have the military do it! They work for however many hours you want them to, follow orders without question, and have the added bonus of increasing order in whatever area they occupy... er... help out with. (unless, of course, someone with weapons wants them gone (in case you were thinking of Iraq as a counter-example))

Basically, it comes down to what you want in life. Do you want to always be protected from every danger in life? Then facism is for you! It doesn't have to be a dirty word, broadcasters on FOX news advocate it daily, they just don't call it that.

Do you want freedom? Then you have to be ready to fend for yourself. Does that scare you? Then you don't know what real freedom means. Oh sure, you were told what freedom means, freedom is whatever we live with at the present, right? Oh my friend, you have a lot to learn.

Not to be cliche, but the choice is yours. Do you want the government to run every aspect of your life, save you from disasters, crime, and poverty? Do you want to eliminate inefficiency? Have a strong military? Do you want a strong leader who will take responsibility and the burden of decisionmaking away from you? Do you want to be guaranteed a job?

Or, do you want to decide your own life, take risks, have personal responsibility for your own safety, face the risk of failure, put up with a stumbling beurocracy, have to make important decisions on a daily basis, tolerate poverty, and/or a weaker, conscription based military?

Man, that last option seems harder, doesn't it? It would be so much easier to choose the first.

Exactly. That's why it's the one everyone is choosing without even realizing it.

The "Argument" for Faith

2005-09-22T11:31:00.000-05:00

Those with religious beliefs, reluctant to give up their own despite contrary and logical evidence, and more often than not eager to convince others to believe, often using arguments like the following to convince people to follow some religion (whatever it may be):

"If you aren't religious, then you have no morals (or are not required to act ethically)"
"Either you believe in a religion, or you are prone to commit evil."
"Either you believe in a religion, or you have no sense of right or wrong."
"Without religion, there would be no reason to follow rules."

These are all examples of the False Dilemma fallacy, where two options are presented when in fact there are more than two options.

Truthfully, there are more than enough reasons to behave ethically without the threat of damnnation hanging over your head. A group of people simply getting together and creating a legal code of proper behavior, for example. Or, if you think man-made laws are not a deturent (as though spiritual ones were) you could try pragmatism, which actually should sound familiar to you: "Treat others how you would want to be treated." No personal savior or God needed. Of course, a counter argument to that one would be what if someone liked being hurt, and hurt others without their consent. But that's why we have a legal code of conduct.

Why should our moral behavior be regulated in some otherworldly realm? Why isn't it good enough just to have our earthly laws? Could there be some other motivation there for this spiritual realm? My magic 8 ball points to most likely.

With a personal savior no one has to accept the consequences of their actions. "Jesus died for our sins" you say, so you don't have to feel guilty when sins are committed because all you have to do is ask for forgiveness and everything is ok again. But for people who don't follow this, you accept nothing more than their total damnation, as though it was revenge you wanted against those who refuse to do the same as you.

And revenge is what you want, against those who slip through the human justice system, or those who you feel have wronged you. It's nice to believe that those who aren't punnished for wrongful actions in this life will be in the next. How unfair it would be if they would just die and "get away with it"! Of course, there's no need to reform our justice system at all, because anyone who slipped though the cracks would be damned to hell anyway, right?

Religion provides a comfortable place to be. On one hand, your enemies are all punished, and on the other, you're forgiven for all your own transgressions! If only we could invent some system like that here in our human realm...

It's clear that justice is not the motivation behind these arguments for faith, but revenge, personal absolution, and fear. After all, are not the arguments above designed to make the other person afraid? Afraid that there are no other options than faith or chaos and damnation? But the knowledgable person must know that there is a third way, a way out of this dualistic thinking. There are the rules and laws of human kind, which for any rational adult should be enough to deturmine just action.

Why I'm not a Pacifist

2005-09-19T12:58:00.000-05:00

Pacifism, the opposition to the use of force in most, or all situations, even in opposition to force acted upon the pacifist, is something that I cannot agree with not only on the grounds that such a philosophy isn't practical, but also that it isn't desirable.

Although, in the words of an unknown: "to hate war should not be called pacifism." The pacifist allows his or her enemy to come into their home and destroy whatever they want, and kill or brutalize whoever they want- on principal. The warrior prepares for the defense of their home in case an enemy should attack him or her, although he or she hopes to never have to use the defenses. Who hates war more? Maybe we'll never know, but at least the warrior has a fighting chance.

Let me tell you something else: right now in this country there are survivalists preparing for a disaster by stockpiling weapons and no food. Think about that. Do they not intend to just take whatever they need from others? How would you defend yourself against them? Since every living thing has the right to survive, do those living things not also have the right to defend themselves against those who threaten their survival?

Bears have claws, birds have beaks and talons, deers have antlers, cows have horns. But would you rather live as the farm cow, whose horns have been removed? It was the removal of their defense (as well as their lack of intelligence) that led cows into their current slavery. How quickly would we become slaves if we surrendered our defenses? I'm afraid fairly quickly.

That is why any right to defense has been continually stripped away by those who wish to dominate over a group of people. The first thing they do is remove the defeated people's only means of defense. We have seen this in Iraq, where the insurgeants are put on trial if they are caught, as though their resistance was not just wrong from our point of view, but illegal. Implying that people under occupation by a foreign country (us in this case) do not have the legal right to defend themselves. They have been neutered, made "safe" for use and abuse by others.

The pacifist welcomes this. They gladly surrender their only means of defense for a "safe" society. But my friends, there is no such place! You say the presence of weapons make the world unsafe, I say your lack of preperation has made you unsafe. Whether you like it or not, there will always be those out there, human or otherwise, that want some bennifit at your expense, and they're going to take it with or without your consent. By giving up the will to fight, you are only making their task that much easier.

Suppose all of humanity had been disarmed, and made the most gentle sheep. Who would protect you from the preditors of nature? It was only 150 years ago when packs of wolves made our prairies unsafe for travel at night. If you were attacked, would you throw rocks at the animals? But that would be cruel! That would be against your principles. However, your family being mauled apparently isn't.

You say my analogy is absurd? I say that your philosophy is absurd, and deserves just such an analogy. Even if we melted down all the guns, people would use knives. Even if we got ride of those, they would use rocks. There simply will never be an end to war.

Nor would that end be desireable: for with war comes invention, sometimes bad, but sometimes good. Limited wars envigorate the economy, keep the population in check, expand contact across the globe (only through conquest was Alexander able to bring the East and West togther- something that hadn't been achieve by any other means) War also is one of the things that give humans meaning and a goal. It challenges us to push our physical and mental limits. It is the exorsize of healthy societies.

Of course, war is also terribly destructive, and it brings out the extremes in humanity. But like fire revives a forest, occasionally we need something to cleanse the old and obsolete from our cultures. You say this is cruel, but it is not cruel, it is nature. It is the survival of the fittest.

But let's talk about limited wars, because that's where the middle ground must be. We saw what can be done when total wars oblitorate entire countries, bleed the life of cultures, and break the minds of men with its horrors. That's why I advocate, along with some moderate pacifists, coming back from the brink of modern warfare, and practicing a more useful form of warfare, a kind that has many bennifits for societies as a whole.

But that's something for another time. My position is clear: there will never be a time when there will never be armed conflict, nor would that time even be benificial (but only lead to stagnation and decay), and the position that we shouldn't defend, or prepare to defend ourselves is simply absurd, given all the dangers in the world.

What is your favorate amendment?

2005-09-15T14:34:00.000-05:00

I attended a panel discussion at a Midwestern university yesterday, the topic being the Patriot Act and constitutionality. On the panel were student leaders of various political groups. 2 on the right, and 2 on the left. The first question asked was "which amendment do you think is the most important". Across the board, each person answered "the first." This reply surprised me, although it probably shouldn't have. After all, the first amendment does come first, implying its great importance, and free speech seems to be the topic of the day. If I was on the panel, my answer would be simple:

The second.

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

Simply put, it is the second that safeguards all the others. Over the course of decades, we have seen our rights meticulously stripped away, but how fast would those rights have dissapeared if the government had no reason to fear retribution? Because of the militias, because of the millions of guns possessed by freedom-loving Americans, any abrupt and blatant dissolution of rights would be immediately resisted with force. We saw that in the Civil War, and I have no doubt such a thing would happen again if a large portion of our population felt their rights were being infringed upon. So, I believe that the second amendment is the only thing keeping us from the grip of an overt dictitorial regime.

That doesn't mean, however, that such a regime does not operate behind closed doors, or that more and more power is being centralized in the government beaurocracy. This is happening, but mostly out of the public eye.

I think this is what those who would want to ban and regulate guns don't understand. Guns are the only thing keeping us "free" (or at least in a state of restricted freedom). To give up that right would mean almost certain enslavement, and why not? We would no longer have any way to resist such a thing. Abolishing the second amendment would be the final straw, the thing that takes us over the brink. Once the population is disarmed, who would be able to resist? A hippie chaining himself or herself to a building? A laughable scenerio.

(For those of you who would like to believe the myth that the revolutions in the 1960s were peaceful, I would suggest reading a little history, or just asking your parents.) Martin Luther King alone did not force change. Your "peaceful" 1960s revolutions included: Black Panther Party, Weathermen, 1968 Democratic National Convention, 12th Street Riot, Kent State shootings, etc.

Simply put, I believe that the second amendment is by far the most important, in that it safeguards the others from abolishment.

The Future is Now

2005-09-14T10:12:00.000-05:00

Dutch to Open Electronic Files on Children

Beginning Jan. 1, 2007, all citizens will be tracked from cradle
to grave in a single database — including health, education, family and police
records — the health ministry said Tuesday.
As a privacy safeguard, no single person or agency will be able to access all contents of a file. But organizations can raise "red flags" in the dossier to caution other agencies about problems, ministry spokesman Jan Brouwer said.

The seduction of power

I can't explain how incredibly worried that makes me, and to what lengths we should go to resist any such measures here at home. Unfortunately, "free speech" is just a catchphrase, so I'll refrain from stating the full extent of my opinion here. But I will say a few things.

Notice the line: "As a privacy safeguard,". My friends, privacy safeguard-- in a database that tracks you from birth? I'm afraid any "privacy safeguard" has long since failed.

I'm afraid that there are those without levers of power who would readily throw themselves at this kind of frightening abuse of power, and eat up everything those with power say is "necessary" to help and protect them.

But let me give you this example.

Suppose your neighbor suddenly demanded that he know everything about you, that he should be able to keep track of your children from birth, for their "saftey". Would you let him? Suppose this neighbor owned a tank, and was appointed by someone that you didn't vote for, but two other people did. Would you feel compelled to put your life and your children's lives in his hands then?

What right do a hundred people who want tyrrany have to vote on behalf of the ten who do not?

What happens if you don't want your children in this database? Will you be thrown in jail? Will you be considered a "bad" parent and have your children taken away?

Only in the insanity that prevails today could this article be written without "raising red flags" of the media, and anyone who still actually believes in freedom. *shakes head* This calls for such stronger language of condemnation. But who today has the courage for those words?

teen pregnancy

2005-09-02T14:22:00.000-05:00

Ohio High School Has 64 Pregnant Students

Am I the only one who doesn't think this is what we should be worrying about right now? Call me unconventional, but I still don't see what the big crisis is. So they get pregnant at 18, etc. It's society's fault that we can't accommodate the phenomenon of pregnancy outside of our stringent social constructs. Maybe it would help if we stopped treating it as a disease. They (the mothers and the babies) are human beings that deserve to be treated like human beings, not like statistics or unwanted garbage.

"This has gotten to horrible proportions. I wish I knew the answer to why it's happening," principal Kim Redmond told the city's daily newspaper The Repository.

Well Mrs Redmond, when two people feel some kind of attraction to each other, and hormones block the rational portion of their brains, they often act out that attraction according to their biological instincts, which sometimes results in the fertilization of the female egg, which then has a chance to develop into an embryo. For more information on how babies get made, please see any 5th or 6th grade sex education manual.

I didn't realize that they allowed special education students to advance to the level of school principal.

"Home of the Brave"

2005-09-01T11:21:00.000-05:00

New Orleans in Anarchy With Fights, Rapes

"We are out here like pure animals," the Issac Clark said.

"We've got people dying out here — two babies have died, a woman died, a man died," said Helen Cheek. "We haven't had no food, we haven't had no water, we haven't had nothing. They just brought us here and dropped us."

Tourist Debbie Durso of Washington, Mich., said she asked a police officer for assistance and his response was, "'Go to hell — it's every man for himself.'"

"This is just insanity," she said. "We have no food, no water ... all these trucks and buses go by and they do nothing but wave."

Unrest Intensifies at Superdome Shelter

"Outside the Convention Center, the sidewalks were packed with people without food, water or medical care, and with no sign of law enforcement. Thousands of storm refugees had been assembling outside for days, waiting for buses that did not come.

At least seven bodies were scattered outside, and hungry, desperate people who were tired of waiting broke through the steel doors to a food service entrance and began pushing out pallets of water and juice and whatever else they could find.

An old man in a chaise lounge lay dead in a grassy median as hungry babies wailed around him. Around the corner, an elderly woman lay dead in her wheelchair, covered up by a blanket, and another body lay beside her wrapped in a sheet.

"I don't treat my dog like that," 47-year-old Daniel Edwards said as he pointed at the woman in the wheelchair. "I buried my dog." He added: "You can do everything for other countries but you can't do nothing for your own people. You can go overseas with the military but you can't get them down here."

New Orleans Cops Ordered Back to Streets

New Orleans' homeland security chief, Terry Ebbert, said looters were breaking into stores all over town and stealing guns. He said there are gangs of armed men moving around the city. At one point, officers stranded on the roof of a hotel were fired at by people on the street.

Authorities said another officer was shot in the head and a looter was wounded in a shootout. Both were expected to survive.

Looters also chased down a state police truck full of food. The New Orleans police chief ran off looters while city officials themselves were commandeering equipment from a looted Office Depot. During a state of emergency, authorities have broad powers to take private supplies and buildings for their use.

On Mississippi coast, modern life is in pieces

Amid the struggle to truck in food, water, ice, clothing and other essentials, a few Mississippians broke the law — sometimes far inland from the coastal destruction zone. Hattiesburg Mayor Johnny Dupree said some people were looting in his city of 46,000 about 60 miles north of Gulfport.

"What it's doing is stretching my police force thin," Dupree said. "What I need the most is law enforcement help. I need some sworn officers who can enforce the law."

In the Biloxi-Gulfport area, about 7,000 people are staying in 20 shelters. "The need is overwhelming," said Maj. Dalton Cunningham, Salvation Army commander for Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama.

Whitehouse vs Reality

2005-08-31T10:09:00.000-05:00

White House:

Katrina impact likely limited - W. House

""As long as we find that the energy impact is only temporary and there's not permanent damage to the infrastructure, my guess is that the effects on the overall economy will be fairly modest," Bernanke told CNBC television. "

Reality:

90 percent of structures in Mississippi disaster zone 'gone': governor

"Between the beach and the railroad, ... every house is just gone," Barbour told NBC television. "Ninety percent of the structures are totally just gone. Debris (is) knee deep, waist deep, hip deep."
"It is indescribable," he said. "You'll see blocks and blocks and blocks where there are just no houses left. I mean, nothing."

Michael Paine:

When are Americans going to stop following those elected officials who neither care nor even have a grasp on what's going on in America? They would rather send aid to some foreign country to help out our PR than do something about what's going on at home.

It's just pure insanity

Pictures courtisy of The Lafayette Daily Advertiser

Here's that article I was talking about in the comments:

Bush on defensive over hurricane response

America: as dangerous as Iraq?

2005-08-29T13:14:00.000-05:00

These two soldiers found out that even when you're home, you're not out of harms way.

Police Need Your Help In Capturing Beating Suspects

Meanwhile New Orleans is being dismantled, and the money we could have used to help the people there has already been shoveled into the war in Iraq.

Expert: Katrina could unleash disaster

But hopefully the worst case scenario will not be realized.

The Forgotten War

2005-08-26T22:41:00.000-05:00

Does anyone remember a war in Afghanistan? I do, and although it may not be as televised as Iraq, things have been heating up over there. In the past 8 months, 73 US troops have been killed in Afghanistan, almost more than the past 2 years combined.

Pretty good for a group of insurgents we were supposed to have defeated several years ago.

Pretty good for a force that reportedly loses 10-50 fighters in every battle, according to the US military. One wonders where a defeated and demoralized enemy keeps getting all these recruits from. One of the keys to their increased effectiveness has apparently been the use of tactics similar to those used by the insurgents in Iraq (IEDs, etc)

My questions is, and it's a very open-ended question, why has it taken so long for the United States to subdue the rebels over there? Rebels who seem to be growing more and more effective every year.

With our army pinned down in both Afghanistan and Iraq, Al Qaeda has to know that our ability to respond to another threat is very limited, if that hadn't been their strategy all along. Now, I had been saying this for years: that President Bush, by invading Iraq, actually has made the United States more vaunerable to attack. We haven't "taken the war to the enemy," we made the blunder they had hoped for all along. Meanwhile, with the reserves and regular army units tied up and bled by casualties, disease, and the general disorder of combat, our "homeland" is virtually defenseless, if not for the millions of gun-toting NRA members.

What that means beyond that, I have no idea. A well organized group of terrorists wreaking havoc on our infrastructure, with no one but the overworked FBI to hunt them down? Perhaps causing some explosions at various refineries, factories, and plants all over the US? A little far fetched, maybe, but possible? I would say it's certainly possible.

Meanwhile our resources are devoted to fighting greater threats to public security.

The Unethical Actions of Modern War

2005-08-17T21:59:00.000-05:00

By Michael Kleen

(Please ask permission, or give credit, before using any portion of this essay. This essay is protected under intellectual property copywrite laws)

“The art of war is of vital importance to the state,” Sun Tzu, the well-known author of The Art of War, wrote around 2,500 years ago. “It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence under no circumstances can it be neglected.”[1] I also believe that in order to talk about war it is first necessary to assume that war is a condition of the human experience, that war itself isn’t necessarily unethical, especially in defense, and that certain wartime actions are acceptable. With that understanding, I think that we can quickly determine what actions should be acceptable in war and which should not be. Unfortunately, the rules for combat that had been laid out by philosophers of war and treaties for the past two thousand years have recently been called into question by our own government, among others. With the creation of new and deadlier weapons, the ability of insurgents and terrorists to use unconventional weapons, and the resurgence of an imbalance of world power, strong doubt has been cast on the entire notion of rules for war. I contend, conversely, that these situations have only strengthened our need for codes of conduct in war, and scrapping the rules would only throw us into a new age of technical barbarity.

It would be hard to find examples of philosophers who would throw out the rules of warfare. “Only one who knows the disastrous effects of a long war can realize the supreme importance of rapidly bringing it to a close,” Sun Tzu wrote. “It is only one who is thoroughly acquainted with the evils of war who can thoroughly understand the profitable way of carrying it on.”[2] Perhaps the United States has been too far removed from the horrors of war to heed Sun Tzu’s words. Sun Tzu never laid out codes of conduct for treating the enemy on ethical grounds, but he did recognize having such limits for practical reasons. He knew that a short war could be beneficial, but the longer it went on the worse it was for both sides. He also knew that it was better to preserve the infrastructure of a country rather than indiscriminately leveling it, unlike was done during the terror bombings of the Second World War, and recently in Iraq, where we call repairing the damage we inflicted on their infrastructure ‘progress’. “The best thing of all is to take the enemy’s country whole and intact,” the Chinese general wrote. “To shatter and destroy it is not so good. The worst policy of all is to besiege walled cities.”[3] Sun Tzu knew that not only did your army suffer when attacking a city, but the opposing people suffered as well. No one could pretend to speak for Sun Tzu, but it can be assumed based on his writings that he would not approve of the haphazard way we perform war today. Cities have become primary targets, and civilians are always caught in the middle. The vast majority of casualties in the wars of the past fifty years have been civilians.

It would be thousands of years before another philosopher tackled the art of war to the same extent. This time the setting was Renaissance Italy, and the author none other than Niccolō Machiavelli. In a departure from his ends-justifying philosophy in The Prince, he explores the art of war from a more reserved standpoint. Through the character of Fabrizio he talks about the correct ways of waging war, giving examples from and praising the actions of the ancient Romans. The most relevant section of his Art of War talks about the pacification of enemy towns once they have been occupied. Machiavelli suggested that some “remarkable examples of continence and justice” were the best ways to win the hearts of a people. “Such was the example of Scipio in Spain when he returned a most beautiful young lady, safe and untouched, to her father and husband,” he related. “A circumstance which was more conductive to the reduction of Spain than any force of arms could ever have been.”[4] However, Machiavelli also writes “it is better to subdue an enemy by famine than by sword.”[5] It seems that while he thinks it is best to leave the countryside physically intact, he is willing to let civilians suffer to achieve his ends. Even still, it could be argued that starving is better than being obliterated with bombs. In the end, Machiavelli still maintained his support for limited wars to acquire a province, resources, or to secure the safety of a state’s borders. Unfortunately, modern war-scholars would reject this idea out of hand, and contend that victory could not be achieved without the total defeat of the enemy.

“The aim of war in conception must always be the overthrow of the enemy; this is the fundamental idea from which we set out,” Carl Von Clausewitz wrote a few hundred years after Machiavelli, during the age of Napoleon.[6] He also laid out his thesis for total war while still holding to a principal of fair treatment for the enemy. Ironically, the object of wars in the middle ages as he points out and criticizes― to punish and subdue the enemy through looting and the burning of towns― is not that far off from the kind of warfare we see today. This devastation, according to Von Clausewitz, was “justly looked upon as unnecessary barbarity, which might easily induce reprisals, and which did more injury to the enemy’s subjects than the enemy’s government.”[7] Unfortunately, we see the identical situation today, when revenge attacks beget revenge attacks and innocent people are targeted for their leader’s wrongdoings seemingly without end.

To Clausewitz there were three circumstances that meet the criteria for having defeated a country. These were:

1) Dispersion of his army, if it forms, in some degree, a potential force.
2) Capture of the enemy’s capital city, if it is both the center of the power of the state and the seat of political assemblies and factions.
3) An effectual blow against the principal ally, if he is more powerful than the enemy himself.[8]

It seems that the destructive tactics employed today such as terror bombing, carpet-bombing, the shelling of towns and cities, concentration camps, assassination, and nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons would not fit into Clausewitz’s equation. Those tactics only serve to wreck havoc and cause the murder of thousands of unarmed civilians. Some would argue that those tactics are necessary to subdue a hostile population, but it seems that many of the great thinkers on war would disagree.

R. B. Brandt would also disagree. He is the author of an essay entitled Utilitarianism and the Rules of War. He argued for some rules of war on a contractual utilitarian basis. He pointed out, in his essay, which rules a rational person would “be willing to put themselves under a contract to obey” if they were ignorant of what status they would have in the society the rules would be enforced. For instance, they wouldn’t know if they would be a general or a prisoner or a simple munitions factory worker. “Utility is maximized,” he argues, “within our basic limitations, by a strict rule calling for good treatment of the civilian population of an occupied territory. And the same can be said more generally for the condemnation of the wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.”[9] He goes on to say that “substantial destruction of lives and property of enemy civilians is permissible only when there is good evidence that it will significantly enhance the prospect of victory.”[10] I take issue with his last premise. As we’ve seen above, victory can be achieved without having to cause undo destruction to anything. Sun Tzu argued that victory can and should be achieved without the force of arms at all. Some would say that is not a realistic assessment of modern wartime situations. They would argue that there is no other way to stop certain leaders from abusing their power, and that destruction is the only thing those leaders understand. Perhaps that’s the case, but I suspect that it applies more so to themselves than anyone. Perhaps destruction is the only thing they understand as meaning victory because their goal is the complete subservience of the enemy to their philosophy and way of life, rather than simply acquiring some resource. The concept of wars being fought over ideas in such a way has only been around for a relatively short time. The goal of those wars is to beat your enemy into submission and get them to renounce their allegiance to whatever idea it is that you disagree with. Only in that instance would the current levels of destruction be permitted. I would argue, and I think the philosophers I’ve mentioned above would agree, that those are not practical reasons for going to war simply because it brings about so much devastation and only breeds more hatred and resentment.

Much of the time spent discussing modern war in the media at large is a blame game of who is the worst party in the conflict. For instance, the United States, invading Iraq to remove perceived weapons of mass destruction, has plenty of its own such weapons, and each side claims the other is the worst proliferator. L.C. Green, in his book Essays on the Modern Law of War, puts it into better words when he says: “cobras would advocate the banning of horses, claws, and cutting teeth, but would denounce in the strongest terms a proposal to outlaw venom.”[11] What we should be doing, instead of who committed the worst atrocities, is following the rules for military conduct we have already laid out. Instead, the leaders of countries tout their high standards for military conduct, then throw them aside once war starts and blame their enemy for violating the rules first.

I think the conventions laid out and signed by most of the major world powers should be followed not just because of their utility, but also on straightforward ethical grounds. For instance, the Hague Convention on land warfare prohibits “the attack or bombardment, by whatever means, of towns villages, dwellings, or buildings which are undefended.”[12] Even though this document was signed before World War One, and was subsequently disregarded by all the combatants in that war, I think that it still applies to today’s situations. For example, Article 23 states: “a belligerent is likewise forbidden to compel the nationals of the hostile party to take part in operations of war directed against their own country.”[13] This is ethically wrong on the simple grounds that if your country was being invaded you would not want to be compelled to fight your own countrymen. Yet in the second invasion of Iraq, the United States attempted to get the newly reformed Iraqi army to fight against their own citizens. Many refused, abandoned their posts, or even joined the growing insurgency. I am sure violating this simple principle only served to increase animosity towards our country.

It is also forbidden by the convention to: “kill or wound an enemy who, having laid down his arms, or having no longer means of defense, has surrendered at discretion,” and equally forbidden to: “employ arms, projectiles, or material calculated to cause unnecessary suffering.”[14] These two articles were also callously violated in our recent invasion or Iraq, as shown on footage shot by journalists of marines shooting and killing wounded Iraqis and laughing about it afterwards. Our frequent use of cluster bombs in Afghanistan would also constitute a weapon that causes more suffering than it needs to. All of these violations only lead to increased hatred of our soldiers by the civilian population in occupied countries, animosity towards our country, and insure that the violence continues for years to come, even after the primary military objectives have been achieved. It was only by acting ethically and heeding the laws of war that we could have prevented this current situation.

I think that the countries of the world can still back down from revenge-orientated warfare and practice the kind of ethical warfare that Sun Tzu and Machiavelli would have preferred. Even in an extreme act like warfare we can still practice the philosophy of the Golden Rule, that of doing to others what we’d have done to ourselves, and stand by the principals we have tried so hard to lay down. Only then can we see a reduction in the kinds of wholesale slaughters where more civilians are killed than soldiers, and every town and village becomes a target.

[1] Sun Tzu. The Art of War. Trans. James Clavell. New York: Delacorte Press, 1983. pg. 10
[2] Sun Tzu, pg. 13
[3] Sun Tzu, pg. 15
[4] Machiavelli, Niccolo. The Art of War. Trans. Neal Wood. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 1965. pg. 179
[5] Machiavelli, pg. 202
[6] Von Clausewitz, Carl. On War. Ed. Anatol Rapoport. New York: Penguin Books, 1968, 1982. Pg. 388
[7] Von Clausewitz, pg. 383
[8] Von Clausewitz, pg. 390
[9] Brandt, R.B. “Utilitarianism and the Rules of War.” War and Moral Responsibility. Ed. Marshall Cohen, Thomas Nagel, & Thomas Scanlon. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974. Pg.35
[10] Brandt, pg. 36
[11] Green, LC. Essays on the Modern Law of War. Dobbs Ferry, New York: Transnational Publishers, 1985. Pg. 157
[12] Hague Convention (IV) respecting the laws and customs of war on land, 1907. Section II Chapter I article 25
[13] Hague Convention (IV). Section II Chapter I article 23
[14] Hague Convention (IV). Section II Chapter I article 23

Detroit Update

2005-08-15T09:30:00.000-05:00

This article is very illuminating

Shrinking Detroit has 12,000 abandoned homes

My response to Michael Barone

2005-08-11T10:30:00.000-05:00

In the august 15-22, 2005 issue of the US News & World Report, there is an article entitled Cultures Aren't Equal (pg26), by Michael Barone (a commentator on The McLaughlin Group and main author of an almanac on current politicians in the US)

In this article he attacks multiculturalism, which he accuses of giving refuge to Muslim extremists through the belief that everyone living in the country should retain their cultural heritege. He states that this tolerant view allows others with an intolerant view to flurish in our country. His solution is to recognize that not all cultures are "morally" equal, and that our western culture, specifically the US and Britain (he leaves out the rest of western Europe for some reason... or at least only says "also in other parts of Europe"), is recognizably superior.

I also take issue with multiculturalism, for different reasons, but I strongly disagree with Barone on "moral equivilancy", and am surprised that someone with his political knowledge would make such glaring errors in this essay.

Here are some quotes and my response to those quotes:

"Multiculturalism is based on the lie that all cultures are morally
equal. In practice, that soon degenerates to: All cultures all morally
equal, except ours, which is worse. But all cultures are not equal in
respecting representative government, guaranteed liberties and the rule of law. And those things arose not simultaneously and in all cultures but in
certain specific times and places- mostly in Britain and America but also other parts of Europe."

Moral comparisons are interesting. Morality, a distinction between good conduct and bad conduct, is something every culture has. The idea that our distinctions are somehow better than others is simply based on preferance, and the problem is that cultures change all the time. When you say "Western values are this:" what you really mean is "the Western values which I prefer to mention and that exist in theory at the present time are this:" "Western values" have not remained consistant, and Barone admits this by glossing over the "other parts of Europe" where his theory hasn't held up. Furthermore, he seems to think that any mention of failings in our culture equals saying that our culture is worse than any others. I think the main motivation in highlighting those faults isn't to degrade our culture, but to admit that nothing is flawless and we might still have some things to work on. (If you don't know what's wrong, how can you fix it?)

Also, who says representative government, guaranteed liberties and the rule of law are the highest values? We do, of course, but others might not agree. On what basis do we say those values are the "best vlaues" or that we even follow them? Nazi Germany, a country most Americans and British despise, had a rule of law, they had representitves, and they had liberties (but only for loyal Germans) Yet we find no problem in critisizing them for their atrocities. Yet according to Barone, it's a crime to critisize the US and Britian for their own atrocities. Because apparently one dead person isn't "morally equivilant" to another. What kind of value is that?

Lastly, has not "multiculturalism" become a Western vlaue? How can Barone say we are culturally superior, and commit the same offense as the relativists by critisizing a part of that culture?

More hypocracies:

Barone wants to expel people who advocate violence and a way of life that's radically different from our own. But yet, does he have any misgivings about advocating violence against our enemies? Against Bin Ladin?

How is being intolerant against those who are intolerant acting any better than (or superior to) them?

More on this later

Coincidence?

2005-08-10T09:15:00.000-05:00

Am I the only one that sees a pattern in the recent explosions at industrial facilities all over the US? Am I the only one that thinks it's wierd that there's very few, if any, follow-up stories to these events, even though they say there are investigations pending? (although not in all cases) Why are they so quick to proclaim them accidents before any facts come in? Here's a partial list of the most recent incidents, with links to articles about them:

Explosion Injures Woman in San Francisco (8-19-2005) California
Explosion at chemical plant ignites fire (8-10-2005) Texas
Explosions Rock Chemical Plant in Mich (8-9-2005) Michigan
Fire, Explosion Rock St. Louis Gas Plant (6-24-2005) Missouri
15th body found after Texas refinery blast (5-24-2005) Texas
Explosion Shakes Sinclair Refinery In Southwest Tulsa (3-21-2005) Okl.
Plant explosion shakes Houston neighborhood (12-4-2004) Texas
Illinois chemical plant blast kills 4 (4-24-2004) Illinois
Six workers injured in Gallup refinery explosion (4-9-2004) New Mexico
Explosion, fire at Exxon Baytown, TX, Chemical plant (4-1-2004) Texas
Explosions rock Arkansas chemical plant (1-6-2004) Arkansas
Residents near oil refinery evacuated after explosion (8-15-2003) Michigan
Ponca City rocked by refinery explosion, fire (7-21-2003) Oklahoma
Gas Plant Explosion Causes Neighborhood Evacuation (5-9-2003) Ohio
KY explosion forces evacuation (4-11-2003) Kentucky
Explosion rocks NC plant (1-30-2003)

Our infrastructure must be worse off than I thought. I wonder what the average number of these 'accidents' is per year in the United States.

Detroit, Part 1

2005-08-09T14:13:00.000-05:00

"We Hope For Better Things; It Shall Rise From the Ashes" - Detroit Motto

Detroit is the 11th most populous city in the United States, but is the 2nd most dangerous. It was also home to the 12th Street Riot. I had the opportunity to visit the birthplace of Motown and took these pictures.

I had heard of the city's reputation, of course, but I couldn't imagine things being this bad. It was literally block after block of devistation. You can see for yourself in the pictures to the left.

At one point I passed a school that had a high brick wall, and razor wire on top of the wall. Can you imagine being a kid in school, looking out your window every day and seeing razorwire? Or walking down streets where no one seems to bother mowing the lawn?

Of course not, because if you're like me, you grew up in the virtual serenity of the suburbs or relatively quiet towns, where the poor areas are small and tucked away.

A few miles away from this lay the suburbs of Detroit, some of the safest places in the country. They were made that way by the wealthy who fled Detroit, leaving it 81% African American, who for whatever reason, couldn't do as well as their counterparts.

The ultimate reason for the condition of this city remains a mystery. Surely, no one would want to live in a place like this, but why don't they do something about it? It is a testiment to dispair, dejection, apathy: that "what can I do?" additude that plagues Americans.

What would it take for people to stand up and take notice, to realize that this is not a problem "somewhere else," but right here where you live? What would it take to dispell the myth of American cultural superiority? Why can't we admit that we need help, and admit that our elected officials have failed?

What keeps the myth alive?

Next: Part 2-- Devil's night

Detroit: Part 2

2005-08-09T13:41:00.000-05:00

Devil's Night (wikipedia)

Devil's Night is one name associated with October 30, the night before Halloween, particularly in the metropolitan Detroit, Michigan, area in the United States. Traditionally, kids and teens in the Metro Detroit area played pranks on their neighbors, in the suburbs this largely consisted of ringing doorbells and running away, soaping windows and "decorating" trees with toilet paper, occasionally including throwing eggs at houses. Within the city of Detroit the
mischief extended into hundreds of acts of arson peaking in the mid 1980s, with more than 800 fires set in 1984, and 500-800 fires in the 3 days before Halloween in typical years.

In 1995, Detroit city officials organized and created Angel's Night on and around October 30. Each year, as many as 40,000 volunteers are gathered to patrol neighborhoods and prevent crime. Additionally youth curfews of as early as 6pm are instituted on the days preceding Halloween. This has resulted in a decline to 50-60 fires per day in the days around Halloween.

Devil's Night was fictionalized in the movie The Crow. The term is rarely used in local news reports, but still well-known by Michigan residents. The news media in Detroit now refers to the night as Angel's Night in an effort to boost the efforts of the volunteers.

(When I was there, I saw a cathedral boarded up, with a blackened fascade, amung other empty lots and blackened storefronts)

(Picture to the left: a party store, "oral sex" is spray painted on the side)

(Left: an old railroad car)

Trade War Continues, Americans Oblivious

2005-08-03T19:37:00.000-05:00

Japan slaps trade sanctions on US

"Japan has hit back against the US in a spat over a controversial anti-dumping trade law and said it plans to raise import tariffs by 15% on 15 products.

The trigger for the move has been the US's Byrd Amendment, a law that hands out the money collected in anti-dumping levies to the industries most affected.

Japan, along with other nations, challenged the law and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) declared it illegal.

The European Union and Canada already have imposed retaliatory sanctions."

Live from Cabrini-Green

2005-07-30T23:26:00.000-05:00

I had the opportunity to snap these pictures of the north Chicago housing projects before the remaining buildings are torn down. I apologize for the poor quality, but they had to be taken out of a moving vehicle. What I couldn't bring you were pictures of some of the remaining residents- sad testiments to Chicago's culture of the poor. They were mostly clustered around the remaining basketball courts, shirtless, eyeing the passing cars with contempt. Only a few feet away, brand new apartments with neatly trimmed lawns have been built.

A chronology, courtisy of wikipedia.com:

1850 - Shantys first built on low-lying land along Chicago River; population predominantly Irish. Acquires "Little Hell" name due to nearby gas refinery.

1929 - Harvey Zorbaugh writes "The Gold Coast and the Slum: A Sociological Study of Chicago's Near North Side," contrasting the widely varying social mores of the wealthy Gold Coast, the poor Little Sicily, and the transitional area in between. Marshall Field Garden Apartments, first large-scale (although funded through private charity) low-income housing development in area, completed.

1942 - Frances Cabrini Homes (two-story rowhouses), with 586 units in 54 buildings, completed. Initial regulations stipulate 75% white and 25% black residents. Holsman, Burmeister, et al, architects.

1958 - Cabrini Homes Extension (red brick mid- and high-rises), with 1,925 units in 15 buildings, is completed. A. Epstein & Sons, architects.

1962 - Green Homes (1,096 units, north of Division Street) is completed. Pace Associates, architects.

1966 - Gautreaux et al vs. Chicago Housing Authority, a lawsuit alleging that Chicago's public housing program was conceived and executed in a racially discriminatory manner that perpetuated racial segregation within neighborhoods, is filed. CHA was found guilty in 1969, and a consent decree was issued in 1981.

July 17, 1970 - Sergeant James Severin and Officer Tony Rizzato of the Chicago Police Department are fatally shot.

1981 - Mayor Jane Byrne moves into Cabrini-Green as part of a publicity stunt.
October 13, 1992 - Seven-year-old Dantrell Davis is fatally shot while walking to school with his mother. Some of the shots came from 500-502 W. Oak Street.

1992 - Candyman is released, the story taking place at the housing project.

1994 - Chicago receives one of the first HOPE VI (Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere) grants to redevelop Cabrini-Green as a mixed-income neighborhood.

September 27, 1995 - Demolition begins.

January 9, 1997 - Nine-year-old "Girl X" found in a seventh-floor stairwell at 1121 N. Larrabee Street after being raped, beaten, choked, poisoned with insecticide and scrawled on with gang symbols. Her attacker allegedly stepped on her throat. She was left for dead but went on to live, though the attack blinded her.

1997 - Chicago unveils Near North Redevelopment Initiative, a master plan for development in the area. It recommends demolishing Green Homes and most of Cabrini Extension.

1999 - Chicago Housing Authority announces Plan for Transformation, which will spend $1.5 billion over ten years to demolish 18,000 apartments and build or rehabilitate 25,000 apartments. Earlier redevelopment plans for Cabrini-Green are included in the Plan for Transformation. New library, rehabilitated Seward Park, and new shopping center open.

January 19, 2004 - The man who portrays the mascot of the Chicago Bulls, Chester J. Brewer, is arrested on the suspicion of selling marijuana out of his car at Cabrini-Green.

Private Prisons follow up

2005-07-30T22:31:00.000-05:00

Private Prisons Experience Business Surge

"Vital Statistics"

2005-07-30T11:07:00.000-05:00

Some food for thought...

In 2001-- 30,622 people committed suicide, while 20,308 were murdered.

“For white males aged 15–34, the top two causes were accidents and suicide, while for black males in the same age group, the top two causes of death were homicide and accidents.” – infoplease.com

The number of deaths by firearms from 1999 through 2001 was at its lowest ever since 1979, although they still numbered in the high 20 thousands. The suicide rate has also steadily fallen since 1950. And although male suicide is largely ignored, the rate is much higher than that of women (18.2 vs 4.0 in 2001) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics.

77.5% of murder victims in 2003 were men. Only 22.3% were women. Curiously, the sex of 26 victims couldn’t even be identified.

There were 857,475 legal abortions in the year 2000

Only 0.3% of the US population describes themselves as Atheists, according to the Encyclopædia Britannica, “Black Muslims,” Buddhists & Jews enjoy larger numbers

Percent households with a TV set (2003): 98%
Avg. number TV sets per household (2000): 2.4
________________________________________________

I find that statistics, though they can be skewed, are often very revealing and do wonders to aleviate the chronic condition of misinformation and rumor. For instance, if you were to watch the Lifetime channel, you might think that the murder and suicide rate for women was off the charts compared to that of men. I myself was surprised when I found out that just the opposite was true. It's much more dangerous to be a man in the United States. And even more dangerous to be a developing baby...

-Michael Paine, somewhere in the red states

Michel Foucault and Quills

2005-07-29T10:38:00.000-05:00

By Michael Kleen

Quills, a quasi-historical movie about the infamous writer the Marquis de Sade and his internment in the Charenton asylum, is a nearly perfect representation of Foucault’s characterization of the Great Confinement and the madness of reason he presents in his book, Madness and Civilization. Doug Wright, the screenwriter of Quills, further illustrates this thesis by scattering various facts about the historical Marquis de Sade throughout his commentary on the DVD that tie into the movie’s themes, and the themes of madness in general that also echo Foucault’s work. Most of the facts about Sade’s life will be taken from that commentary for use in this paper.

The movie begins with Sade witnessing an execution 138 years after the Hộpital Général was established in Paris, France. Sade saw around 1,800 such beheadings from the window of his prison cell during the Great Terror, our screenwriter tells us. The executioner is none other than one of the most disturbed patients featured in the Charenton Asylum during the main portion of the film, suggesting that only the most depraved man was needed for the job, but when his services were no longer considered necessary, the poor wretch was locked up without any kind of treatment (because, as Foucault tells us, madness was not considered to be an ‘illness’ at the time). He became one of the many useless people rounded up and put in the asylums, with no accountability by the society that created him. The implication, one that wouldn’t escape Foucault’s attention, was that the justice of Reason was dolled out by the insane, and only someone who was insane could have been suited for the job. This former executioner goes on to be the only one who acts out the Marquis’ writings in a negative way.

“Welcome to our humble madhouse doctor, I’m sure you’ll find yourself at home,” the character of Sade, played by Geoffrey Rush, says to the doctor Antoine Royer-Collard when he first comes to the asylum, who historically arrived at Charenton in 1806. The character of the doctor symbolizes several themes in Foucault’s work. Not the least of which is that he is supposedly a purely rational man, and also a highly moral man (which we learn later is not the case). Because human passions were seen to be a form of madness, according to Foucault, the doctor shows his reason by being totally impassionate. He has an iron barrier in his mind between himself and those he would consider insane. We see rather quickly, however, that the doctor’s methods of relieving madness are cruel, and he shows himself to be morally bankrupt by acquiring a girl from a nunnery to be his wife, who is twice his junior in age. The madhouse, which was at the limits of the law where any form of punishment could be dolled out, according to Foucault, was therefore an ideal place for the doctor to administer his reign of control through strict regimens of terror.

The goal of the doctor is to maintain order, and he treats the mad like animals in cages that need to be broken to his will. In that way the doctor represents the more modern view of madness, as opposed the character of the Abbe Coulmier, who tried to run the asylum using a variety of progressive techniques designed to correct the occupants morally, as was the goal before the modern period, Foucault tells us. There is no moral dilemma for the doctor to deal with, as he takes the view madness is an animality that needs to be confined and contained by brutality and discipline. The character of the doctor puts it best himself when he yells “take this beast back to his cage,” after Sade escapes from his cell and creates a ruckus in the dining hall. The doctor gradually marginalizes the Abbe Coulmier and his moral mission, as morality in the modern age had been confined and “bound to Reason, to the rules of morality and to their monotonous rights.”[1] Likewise, the doctor also confines the passions of his heart. When he brings his young bride home for the first time, he instructs the repairmen working on the mansion to put a lock on the outside of her bedroom door and bar her windows, making her a prisoner as well. In this way he cages in his passions, like those of the mad he’s supposedly so different from.

Through the character of the doctor, we see how madness and reason come together. While Sade is nearly forgiven for his excesses because of his madness, the doctor is condemned for his hypocrisy. “The doctor is a man after my own heart,” Sade says in the film, putting a stamp on the madness of modern reason.

A different subplot in the film that relates to Foucault’s characterization of madness is the love-affair-that-never-was between the Abbe Coulmier and Magdeleinge, the laundry maid played by Kate Winslet. Their forbidden love for each other perfectly illustrates Foucault’s last type of madness: desperate passion. “Love disappointed in its excess, and especially love deceived by the fatality of death, has no other recourse but madness,” he wrote.[2] This is realized near the end of the film when Magdeleinge is killed by the brutal former executioner turned inmate who is driven into a frenzy when he hears one of Sade’s stories. The Abbe, unable to show his love publicly or privately when she was alive, turns to having a necrophilia-driven fantasy when his mind finally breaks from the strain.

Long before that, however, he punishes himself for his immoral thoughts towards Magdeleinge, which is explained by Foucault. “To the moral world, also, belong the madness of just punishment, which chastises, along with the disorders of the mind, those of the heart,” he wrote.[3] In this case, the Abbe chastises himself for having a “disorder of the heart”― having the desire to break his vow of chastity. It’s easy to see the madness in this act of Reason and reigning in of the passions. Here we have two characters, the Abbe and the doctor, who stand in the gray area between madness and reason, but the Abbe is the only one who winds up raving mad and confined in the same cell the Marquis once inhabited. This is symbolic of the modern view of Reason, as a confiner of animals, finally triumphing over the classical view of Reason as a guardian of morality and moral education.

Foucault also wrote that the classical view of madness needed to administer morality like a trade or commodity. Quills represented both the classical and modern views of this exploitation of the mad in the scene where the Marquis writes a satirical play aimed at the excesses of doctor Antoine Royer-Collard, which is performed by the other inmates of the asylum in front of a paying audience. These plays had been put on by the Abbe in the past, as a way to keep the inmates of Charenton busy, in line with the old Hộpital Général policy, which “set itself the task of preventing ‘mendicancy and idleness as the source of all disorders,” Foucault tells us.[4] The doctor disapproves of this and chastises the Abbe for exploiting the inmates for financial gain, although he was clearly embarrassed by the Marquis characterization of his scandal-ridden marriage. Foucault writes about this briefly in Madness and Civilization. “Madness became pure spectacle, in a world over which Sade extended his sovereignty and which was offered as a diversion to the good conscience of a reason sure of itself,” he wrote.[5] Never the less, the doctor has the asylum theater shut down, as the historical Antoine Royer-Collard had in real life. We see in the last scene of Quills, however, that the doctor takes up this mission against idleness in a different form. He puts the inmates to work printing and selling copies of De Sade’s books, in an ironic twist.

The mission of this new regimen was wholly different from the goal of the theater. The purpose of this was menial work designed to produce order in the asylum. It imposed a routine on the inmates and even exploited some of their disorders by having the neurotic inmates set the type, the docile ones press the pages, etc. However, Foucault says of the Modern view of madness that “the relation between the practice of confinement and the insistence on work is not defined by economic considerations.”[6] While some of the doctor’s motives might not be related to economics, in the film we’re left with the impression that the doctor’s primary goal is to make money when he discovers that Sade’s books have become popular.

“We merely held up a mirror, apparently he didn’t like what he saw,” Sade tells the Abbe after his satirical play about the doctor’s marriage enrages the doctor. Likewise, in the beginning of Madness and Civilization, Foucault tells us that people once viewed madness as a mirror of the world. They believed that the world itself was mad, and that somehow madness lay in everyone. De Sade repeats over and over again that he is just writing what he sees. His books, however extreme, are really no more extreme than the brutality of the world around him. In that way his madness could be said to reveal an unpleasant truth about the world. Furthermore, there is no more fascinating and forbidden topic to the people of the Classic age than sex, the theme of most of Sade’s writings.

De Sade’s writing and his political views are as extreme as is humanly possible, therefore he embodies the idea that the madman is at the limits of humanity, as Foucault says. “Madness,” he wrote, “in which the values of another age, another art, another morality are called into question, but which also reflects… all the forms, even the most remote, of the human imagination.”[7] De Sade searched the darkest places of his imagination to come up with more and more extreme examples of sex and brutality, as the movie Quills (although certainly nowhere near the limits) becomes more excessive as it progresses.

Doug Wright reveals in his commentary that it’s rumored De Sade wrote his book 120 Days of Sodom on a long scroll that he hid in the wall of the asylum nightly. Like that scroll, which was pulled out of the darkness of a crevice in the wall, Foucault says that madness itself was considered a kind of darkness during the Modern age. In the movie Quills, the characters frequently emerge from a dark or surprising region. Foucault often characterized madness as being the threshold of human behavior― the limit that kept being pushed back. The wall containing the work of madness is symbolic not only of this threshold, but also of the barrier Foucault says artists use to keep their madness at bay. Their work is an attempt to control the uncontrollable aspects of their mind.

According to Foucault, there is an anxious possibility of freedom in the darkness of the mad. It’s this freedom that is exorcized with devastating results during the climax of the film, when a fire ravages Charenton and the inmates escape. Sade is blamed for having instigated the murder of the laundry maid Magdeleinge during this chaos, but with the absolute freedom of the mad comes no adherence to laws or morality. Many of the inmates are seen outside the asylum having sex or dancing naked oblivious to the burning building and chaos around them. That beastial freedom is what terrified, and fascinated, people in the Modern age because they could only dream of being able to let go of their inhibitions and constraints in that way.

“Madness is the purest, most total form of qui pro quo; it takes the false for the true, death for life, man for woman, the beloved for the Erinnys and the victim for Minos,” Foucault says.[8] This characterization plays itself out during the many interweaving subplots of Quills, all orchestrated by the madness of the Marquis De Sade. The film inadvertently illustrates many of the points that Foucault outlines in Madness and Civilization through its display of the historical settings, characters, and interpretations of Sade’s stories. Foucault would have approved of the depth the movie goes to in exploring and giving a voice to this ‘other side’ of Reason.

[1] Foucault, Michel. Madness and Civilization. New York, New York: Vintage Books, 1988. Trans Richard Howard. Pg64
[2] Foucault, pg30
[3] Foucault, pg30
[4] Foucault, pg47
[5] Foucault, pg69-70
[6] Foucault, pg58
[7] Foucault, pg29
[8] Foucault, pg33

Please Make me try Harder

2005-07-25T08:27:00.000-05:00

I try very hard not to make my postings repeditive, to keep them diverse, interesting, and informative. The fact is that I allow dozens of good ranting topics slip through my fingers evey day in the persuit of quality, but I have to admit, it hurts me to do so.

The truth is, I'm bombarded with ironic, moronic, and downright frightening things that go on in this country/ government every day. So much material, in fact, that I find it hard not to post about it several times a day. Take this story for instance:

'Enemies of humanity' quote raises Iraq PR questions

The bottom line in that article is that our military appears to be making up anti-insurgency quotes by Iraqis to boster their propiganda. They just happened to slip up- but otherwise no one would even know it had been going on, not that anyone cares except the few people who caught the story.

Or how about this article contradicting our military's line about Iraqi suicide bombers being cooerced by the insurgency: Reading minds of suicide bombers

Or I could comment on the hypocracy of the US government reaction to this little tidbit: First broadcast for Latin channel

All I can say is that my job is extremely easy. You'd think that if the US government was concerned about its image, it would try harder not to make itself look so horrible. Come on people, make me work for it! All I have to do is scan the news-- I don't even have to leave the comfort of my ever-changing underground network.

For now, I'll try to bring you the juiciest tidbits, and let you find the rest. You really don't have to look very hard...

Private Prisons?

2005-07-22T20:36:00.000-05:00

Corrections Corporation of America

Jul 21, 2004 — Olney Springs, Colorado, United States

"Prisoners rioted and set fires at a privately run prison, destroying one living unit and extensively damaging four others. The disturbance at the medium-security Crowley County Correctional Facility began in the evening in the recreation yard and grew to include several hundred prisoners. A vocational greenhouse was also destroyed during the rioting. The prison, which opened in 1998, is designed to hold 1,152 and currently has 1,807 prisoners from Colorado, 120 from Wyoming and 198 from Washington. The prison is managed by the Nashville, Tennessee-based Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the United States' largest private prison operator."

I wanted to call to your attention the fact that there are prisons in this country that are run by private companies, contracted by the government. I certainly was unaware of this fact until very recently. Something about this strikes me as disturbing, that there is a company out there that is making money off of the overcrowding of the US prison system, not to mention the incarceration of fellow human beings. Implication: arresting people is profitable. Kind of makes you wonder why our prison population is the highest in the world. I find it hard to believe that people find our prisons just so desirable that they keep wanting to go back. (although I do hear about the occasional homeless man who commits a crime for a place to stay)

I like the name too: "Corrections Corporation," as though some kind of correction is being done. Although: CCA EXTENDS FAITH-BASED PROGRAM TO INMATES AND CHILDREN Two New Programs Implemented In CCA Facilities Across the United States

So we have private companies helping to run our prisons here in the states, and private companies helping to fight our war in Iraq. Will the new America be "contracted out"? Will, say in 15 years, all of our fighting be done by mercenaries? Will all our prisons be run by corporations? How about schools? Libraries? Kind of makes you wonder who our taxes are really going to.

Mercenary... the word makes me shutter. Armies fighting for one thing: money.

And now our prisons are run for a profit too. (cheep prison labor = big profits) Is that what our whole society has been reduced to? More and more the evidence seems to be saying, yes.

Could this really happen? A company that cares?

2005-07-20T10:02:00.000-05:00

Is being generous good for business?

Costco Wholesale, to the dissapointment of shareholders, actually takes care of its employees, while selling affordable products. What is the world coming to?

According to the article, Costco offers its employees:

$17 an hour (average pay, 42% higher than Sam's Club)
A health plan that apparently "makes those at many other retailers look Scroogish"

You mean they actually give their employees a health plan??

"Emme Kozloff, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., faulted Sinegal as being too generous to employees, noting that when analysts complained that Costco's workers were paying just 4 percent toward their health costs, he raised that percentage only to 8 percent, when the retail average is 25 percent."

"Despite Costco's impressive record, Sinegal's salary is just $350,000, although he also received a $200,000 bonus last year. That puts him at less than 10 percent of many other chief executives, though Costco ranks 29th in revenue among American companies."

I'd like everyone to really think about this article and ask yourself these questions:

Is the wage difference between employees and most buisness owners really fair?
Do the owners need to make so much more than the employees? Why can't they just make a decent amount more, while providing more for their workers, like the owner of Costco? (look at how much he makes, then think about how that's only around 10% of what other chief executives make)
Why are people so upset about Costco's generous wages and health plan? What kinds of values does that display?
Are those the values you want governing your society?

For shame people, your minimum-wage misery is your own fault. Only slaves justify their masters having so much more over them. I thought we were all equal in the land of the free, isn't that what you tell yourself? Are some more equal than others? But I thought that was how communism was supposed to be...

Historical Continuity in action

2005-07-18T19:03:00.000-05:00

Is this your grandma's silver set?

No. Might as well be though.

These were found preserved in the ruins of Pompeii, a Roman city that was destroyed when Mount Vesuvius erupted in A.D. 79

Archaeologists Unveil Pompeii Treasure

How different from them do you really think we are?

Old Pat is right, and he just might be a continuous thinker

2005-07-16T20:08:00.000-05:00

Just follow the link....

Why Are They Killing Us?

Misinterpretations of the Overman

2005-07-13T16:46:00.000-05:00

By Michael Kleen

The Embarass River Vally, 2005

Ever since Also Sprach Zarathustra was first published in four separate parts there have been willful misinterpretations of who Nietzsche’s overman was and what he represented. One early English translation even had Übermensch meaning ‘superman’, bringing to mind images of a caped Aryan-looking superhero with rippling muscles and supernatural powers. There are many other ways Nietzsche’s Übermensch can be wrongly characterized, but a simple examination of the text can dispel any of these images. In this paper, I will show how the overman can be misinterpreted, and then demonstrate why those interpretations are wrong based on textual evidence.

The idea of the Übermensch as a superman is a good place to start, because it is the oldest and most widespread misconception of Nietzsche’s idea. Usually any mention of the superman brings to mind Adolph Hitler’s eugenically engineered master race, and the fact that Nietzsche’s sister tried to appropriate his philosophy for the National Socialist cause didn’t help. Of course, they were all too eager to interpret the Übermensch as a Nazi superman. Fortunately, one doesn’t have to read that deeply into Also Sprach Zarathustra to see how the two ideas do not match up.

For instance, the Nazi superman was an engine of the state, working for the volk to further the goals of the many, but Nietzsche’s Übermensch fled from the state. Zarathustra, the profit of the overman, called the state a place where people drink poison, and “the slow suicide of all is called ‘life’.”[1] Nietzsche’s characterization of the state as a place where people clamor over each other for wealth and ‘the throne’ bears an uncanny resemblance to the Third Reich, where the National Socialist party members constantly fell over each other to gain Hitler’s favor and be placed in a growing number of non functional positions. “Where the state ends― look there my brothers!” Nietzsche, through the character of Zarathustra, says. “Do you not see it, the rainbow and the bridges of the overman?”[2] For Nietzsche’s Übermensch to come, the state, something that the Nazi superman valued over everything else, would need to cease to exist.

“What of fatherland?” Nietzsche asks in a question almost certainly directed at his sister and her ilk. “Our helm steers us toward our children’s land!” is his answer.[3] Even though the National Socialists often spoke about children being the future, and made them a priority in their Reich, this had a different meaning than what Nietzsche is saying here. Nietzsche almost certainly means that children will be the creators of the future, and should not be shaped by the values of the past, or their ‘fatherland.’ “Our children’s land”, he says, meaning that the land will belong to them as their own creation. In the National Socialist perspective, their idea of children was that they should continue the National Socialist revolution, and be the standard bearers of the old ideology. The Übermensch, as a metaphorical child, would create his own future, and not continue bearing the burden of the fatherland as the Nazi superman would.

Another insurmountable hurdle to the person who would see Nietzsche’s Übermensch as a Nazi superman is Nietzsche’s own insistence on the current non-existence of the Übermensch. “Never yet has there been an overman,” he says. “Naked I saw both the greatest and the smallest man: they are still all-too-similar to each other. Verily, even the greatest I found all-too-human.”[4] The Nazi superman, who would theoretically be intellectually and physically better than the average person, but who would never the less be bound to state ideology, would certainly not surpass humanness. Nietzsche would find these supermen all too similar to each other, and still painfully similar to everyone else as well. The idea that Nietzsche’s Übermensch could be produced en mass is also dismissible. Nietzsche says that there has never been an overman, meaning that not even one has ever existed. Even if the Nazi superman were greater than the average person, they would still be all-too-human in Nietzsche’s eyes.

Even though it should be clear by now that Nietzsche’s Übermensch is not a Nazi superman, there was one more issue that was used to justify the characterization, that of war and warriors. Nietzsche has been accused of being a warmonger for what he says in the aphorism ‘On War and Warriors’ in Also Sprach Zarathustra. Of course, the National Socialists were all too happy to exploit this and interpret the Übermensch as the perfect Aryan soldier. But Nietzsche is not speaking of war in the same way. He says: “My brothers in war, I love you thoroughly; I am and I was of your kind. And I am also your best enemy.”[5] And now examine what Adolph Hitler says in late November 1939: “As long as I live I shall think only of the victory of my people. I shall shrink from nothing and shall annihilate everyone who is opposed to me… I want to annihilate the enemy!”[6] The war of the Übermensch is a personal war, not a war for the ‘victory of a people’. Furthermore, the enemy of the Übermensch is characterized as someone he or she loves thoroughly, not someone who he or she would ‘annihilate’. Also, the war of which Nietzsche speaks isn’t a war of conquest; it’s a war over ideas, your ideas. “Your war you shall wage― for your thoughts,” Nietzsche says.[7] Finally, Nietzsche’s Übermensch would never find himself in any army, let alone the German Wehrmacht. The prophet Zarathustra says explicitly: “I see many soldiers: would that I saw many warriors! ‘Uniform’ one calls what they wear: would that what it conceals were not uniform!”[8] It’s clear by this that he means the Übermensch is a warrior fighting for himself and his ideas, and not the member of some army of supermen.

There are still over ways the Übermensch can be misinterpreted beyond the most frequent one. Although not a common occurrence by any means, the Übermensch as a superman, once free of any National Socialist stigma, could be taken and used for other ideologies, like the freedom-fighting caped comic book superhero that bears the same name. But Nietzsche’s Übermensch wouldn’t fit into this mold either. Zarathustra quite explicitly rejects the American idea of freedom. “Free from what?” he asks. “As if that mattered to Zarathustra! But your eyes should tell me brightly: free for what? Can you give yourself your own evil and your own good and hang your own will over yourself as a law? Can you be your own judge and avenger of your law?”[9] While the comic book hero fights for freedom from oppression, and the upholding of American law and values, Nietzsche’s Übermensch fights for the freedom to make his own laws and values. The comic book superman has yet to throw off the yoke of the old values, and is bound by the morality of good and evil.

Nietzsche’s Übermensch would hardly be a champion of democracy either. Nietzsche feels that democracy is really a form of hatred for rule or government, and “opposes everything that dominates and wants to dominate.”[10] He thinks that this means the will to power, i.e. the will to self-overcoming, is ignored and pushed aside. The forces that would give birth to the overman are crushed by the democratic tendency to rob life of the fundamental concept of activity, which by activity Nietzsche means the creative force to produce changes and the revaluing of values, through its relegating all decisions to the herd. Alternatively, the comic book superman acts for the herd to keep it safe from any threats to its rule and the rule of the herd morality. Thus the American idea of superman retards change, instead of actively overcoming his or her self as well as the old morality.

The American superman also acts as a vengeful judge and jury, who hunts down the breakers of law who have escaped normal justice. In this way he acts as a guardian for morality, but also as its enforcer. This is in complete contrast to Nietzsche’s Übermensch, who would present quite an interesting super villain for the American superman. The Übermensch, far from hunting down his enemies, loves them for challenging him. But more, he passes no moral judgment on them. “Would that you might invent for me the love that bears not only all punishment but also all guilt!” Zarathustra says. “Would that you might invent for me the justice that acquits all, except him that judges!”[11] We couldn’t imagine the comic book superman catching a criminal, but then letting him go. Justice would go unfulfilled in the eyes of the herd, and the American superman would lose his or her purpose.

So we can see that the Übermensch would be a poor spokes model for the American version of the superman as well. But what about the case of an individual who seems to posit his or her own values and defines himself or herself based on the overthrow of conventional morality? Would, for instance, the artist formerly known as Prince, or Marilyn Manson be a good representation of the overman? On the surface it might seem to, since both artists push the limits of acceptability, and incur the wrath of Tipper Gore. After all, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra says: “behold the good and the just! Whom do they hate most? The man who breaks their tables of values, the breaker, the lawbreaker; yet he is the creator.”[12] But this comparison breaks down rather quickly.

Consider the following selection of lyrics from Marilyn Manson’s song Fundamentally Loathsome: “and I am resigned to this wicked fucking world on its way to Hell, the living are dead and I hope to join them too.”[13] Not only does Marilyn Manson posit that the world is somehow fundamentally flawed, which Nietzsche would strongly reject, but Manson’s solution to the problem of nihilism (“the living are dead…”) is more nihilism. Accompanied by evidence from other Manson recordings, it becomes obvious that his solutions to the problems of modernity are fundamentally destructive and wrathful. “Not by wrath does one kill but by laughter,” Nietzsche would say in response.[14] The Übermensch would overthrow conventions through laughing at them, not by advocating nihilistic destruction.

The artist formerly known as Prince would not be a good candidate for the Übermensch either. Even though Prince, who changed his name to a symbol from 1993 to 2000, sought to overthrow conventional ideas about gender and morality by breaking the traditional values and blending sexuality with a mystical version of Christianity, he still held on to those old values, as evident by his recent conversion to the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Nietzsche wrote scathingly of such performance-based challenges of convention. “In the world even the best things amount to nothing without someone to make a show of them: ‘great men’ the people call these showmen,” he says. In this instance he means that such challenges to gender roles offered by Prince would be meaningless to the masses without his superstardom, making the point mute because the motivation is clear: to excite the masses and to sell records to them. The fact that the people call him a great man doesn’t say much when you consider what Nietzsche’s opinion of other people is.

Even in the late 1800s Nietzsche understood the concept of trends, and he would consider the “law breaking” of these performers as one of them. “Always he [the actor] has faith in that with which he inspires the most faith― faith in himself. Tomorrow he has a new faith, and the day after tomorrow a newer one,” Nietzsche says.[15] He believed performers only value making a big noise in the world, and all of their questioning of conventions is nothing more than their attempts at making a spectacle for the audience.

Nietzsche also thought the overman should flee the crowds and their praise, calling them poisonous flies, flatterers and whiners. Marilyn Manson and the artist formerly known as Prince would not be Übermensch because of their devotion to the crowd. “Far from the marketplace and from fame happens all that is great: far from the marketplace and from fame the inventors of new values have always dwelt.”[16] It is clear that Nietzsche would not consider them great men or creators of new values; he would call them mere showmen who have never really gone beyond themselves.

It should be clear by now that the Übermensch is not a superman, but an overman― someone who is beyond man, and not an amplification of man. “Man is something that must be overcome,” Nietzsche says throughout Also Sprach Zarathustra, and the overman is the ultimate expression of this. But, keep in mind that there has never been an overman, and that Zarathustra is merely the prophet of the overman, and not an overman, so any characterization of Nietzsche’s Übermensch in the actual world will be wrong. The Übermensch is a goal― something for individuals to work towards, and we will never be able to even imagine what the Übermensch would be like. For right now, we can only know what the Übermensch is not, as was Nietzsche’s intention. It’s up to us to discover him.

[1] Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Portable Nietzsche. New York, New York: Penguin Books, 1982. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. Pg162
[2] The Portable Nietzsche. Pg163
[3] The Portable Nietzsche. Pg325
[4] The Portable Nietzsche. Pg205
[5] The Portable Nietzsche, Pg158
[6] Shirer, William. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich volume II. New York, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966. Pg658
[7] The Portable Nietzsche, Pg159
[8] The Portable Nietzsche, Pg159
[9] The Portable Nietzsche, Pg175
[10] Nietzsche, Friedrich. Basic Writings of Nietzsche. New York, New York: The Modern Library, 2000. Trans Walter Kaufmann. Pg514
[11] The Portable Nietzsche, Pg180-181
[12] The Portable Nietzsche, Pg135
[13] Manson, Marilyn. “Fundamentally Loathsome”. Mechanical Animals. Interscope Records, 1998.
[14] The Portable Nietzsche, Pg153
[15] The Portable Nietzsche, Pg164
[16] The Portable Nietzsche, Pg164

Lewis Paul Bremer III

2005-07-12T09:52:00.000-05:00

That's right, you heard me.

Lewis Paul Bremer III, or just "Paul Bremer" to us commoners, or "Jerry" to his fellow members of the Bush cabal, was the dictator... I mean "chief administrator" of Iraq from May 11, 2003 until June 28, 2004. You might remember him. His qualifications for the job? Apparently he was an ambassador to the Netherlands and that Ambassador-at-Large for Counterterrorism, whatever that is, back in the '80s. He also won a large amount of neat sounding awards. But we can't hold getting medals against him, if I was in charge I'd give my friends medals too.

The reason I mention it at all was that I'm surprised I never heard or read the name "Lewis Paul Bremer III" before. I did a quick search, and the name only comes up in biographical segments of him. I wonder why no one ever called him Lewis, or lew, or "the Brem-man", or "that rich SOB that pretends to be a common person who was put in charge of an occupied country because he had deep contacts in the administration that oversaw said country's overthrow."

I think that last one is probably a bit too wordy. Wordy, but more accurate. I wonder about a group of leaders that needs to roll up the sleeves of their $50 dress shirts during elections, buy ranches in Texas, wear a cowboy hat, change their name to sound more "middle class", and talk like an idiot to identify with the average American. Who do they think they're fooling?

Apparently everyone, including myself, who bought the whole "Paul Bremer" thing. Wouldn't you rather know that "Paul Bremer" was in charge? How about "Lewis Paul Bremer III"? Is that too distant-sounding? Sounds too much like he's out of touch with everyone else, from some elite class? Well, that's exactly the point, isn't it? "That Paul Bremer is an average joe, just like me!"

Lewis Michael Paine III
somewhere in Republican occupied territory, July 2005

The Pulse of Life

2005-07-11T11:26:00.000-05:00

Countries are living, breathing things. The United States alone is home to 295,734,134 individual people as of July 2005, according to the CIA world fact book. But this number is just an estimate based on our last census, and doesn't include the people not counted. So who really knows how many people there actually are. Every day, every one of those people goes about their lives. Each one of them is a unique window to the world, a self-contained organism- living, growing, dying. The amount that happens in one year to that teaming population is amazing enough. But let's look at the numbers over a 10 year period...

In the past 10 years (best estimates)...

41,402,778 people were born
269,118 of them died within a year of their birth
25,137,000 people died in general
24,000,000 people got married (rounded)
11,600,000 people got divorced (rounded)
32,500 people committed suicide
336,127 people were killed by firearms (between 1992-2001)
$860 billion was given to religious charities
$131 billion was given to charities bennifiting the arts, culture, and humanities
200,000 people were murdered (estimate)
87,000 "hate crimes" were committed
91,000,000 people were arrested (rounded)
27,000,000 people graduated high school (rounded)
11,500,000 people graduated college (bachelor's degrees, rounded)

We can see that a lot goes on in 10 years. But of course, all those numbers don't mean much, they're mere estimates that probably bear only a resemblence to reality. The point of this exorsize was to instill a sense in the reader of the vastness of what occurs in this country over an extended period of time. The statistics were compiled from those found at infoplease, and how accurate they are I have no idea.

A word on human/animal intelligence

2005-07-10T14:44:00.000-05:00

In the article "No Birdbrain, Parrot Grasps Concept of Zero," our intrepid author explores the phenominon of aminals being smarter than we usually think they are. His examples are:

"A 2003 study in the journal Nature, for example, found that common marsh birds called coots can recognize and count their own eggs, even when other eggs are in the nest. Black-capped chickadees were recently found to warn colleagues of danger by chirping about the size and actual threat of individual predators. The language of prairie dogs includes a word for humans. Some animal intelligence is hauntingly familiar, like the male monkeys that pay to see female monkey bottoms. And studies show that monkeys, dogs and rats all know how to laugh."

Then he quips: "There are obvious limits to animal intelligence, of course. Take the 450 sheep who recently jumped to their deaths for no apparent reason."

Here's that article: http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/ap_050708_sheep_deaths.html

Well, there was a reason. Their leader jumped off the cliff first.

Of course, human's are so much smarter. For example:

Pickett's Charge
The Charge of the Light Brigade
Battle of Verdun
Battle of Gallipoli
Jonestown
Heaven's Gate
Suicide Bombers
Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments

Ah, are there no limits to human arrogance?

East St. Louis

2005-07-09T20:01:00.000-05:00

I was able to take these pictures from inside the East St. Louis Ghetto a few years ago. At the time, waiting in the Grayhound bus station, I didn't feel the least bit afraid (contrary to how I thought I would feel in that situation). I think the only thing going through my mind at the time was the question "why?". Why, when we have so much money in this country, so much of it we spend on building up other countries- don't we ever pay attention to the problems in this country?

Is it because our elected officials are so removed from the reality of parts of American life that they don't actually realize that people live in places like this? Why is it that their idea of "urban renewal" involves tearing places like this down and leaving the people who lived there out in the cold?

While I was waiting at the bus station, I found out that the Arby's across the street had been robbed earlier in the day. They kept the doors locked, and only opened them if you had money. There were a number of homeless circling the building trying to get in. One of them wanted me to buy a pouch of CDs, which I'm sure weren't his, since it didn't look like he could afford a CD player.

Read this article on poverty in America: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,132956,00.html
and then compare the writer's outlook to the pictures featured on your left. Robert Rector seems to think our poor have it pretty good. I'd challenge him to go live in East St. Louis for a few months, but I doubt he'd take me up on the offer.

I think that every wealthy person should have to live in a place like Detroit or East St. Louis for at least a year. Heck, they don't even have to go very far. I hear there's a pretty sizable ghetto in Washington DC. I wonder if they would feel any differently about the way they spend their money.

Probably not....

The Importance of Historical Continuity in Post 9/11 America Part 2

2005-07-08T17:22:00.000-05:00

By Michael Kleen

Continued....

So, we can see the origins of linear history. But how is a historically continuous view of history superior to a linear one? The strength of historically continuous thinking lies in its application, not just in the gathering of knowledge. A continuous-thinking person with the same knowledge of historical events as a linier thinking one will nevertheless have a more complete understanding of history, and be able to place current events in a historical context. They would never find themselves asking “why did such-and-such happen,” because they would recognize the historical precedent, or at least know that he or she needed to look for one, while the linear thinking person would believe the event to be an entirely new phenomenon, devoid of any connection to the past. Perhaps they would appeal to some vague or supernatural notion to explain the event. In the case of 9/11, the linear thinker might believe the slogan: “freedom itself was attacked,” or believe that the attackers really hate rock and roll music. In either case, he or she is taken by surprise whenever anything happens, as if that event suddenly materialized out of the blue. Ask a historically-continuous thinking Muslim or European why the attacks on 9/11/2001 took place, and you’ll probably hear a completely different explanation, one that takes into account past events, sometimes going back hundreds of years.

It is still not clear whether those who ignore historical continuity do it because they really believe every event in history can be explained as a self-contained anomaly, or they do it in order to manipulate public opinion about the event. For instance, the rampage at Columbine high school is commonly held up as an example of school violence, as though that one event stood on its own as unique. Yet, since that time, according to a list compiled by the Indianapolis Star, thirty high-profile school shootings have taken place in the United States, including one that involved an AK-47 and a packed gymnasium. The Star also reports that as many as nineteen such incidents came before that, between 1979 and the confrontation at Columbine. Some of those previous incidents contained familiar features: the trench coat, “depressed, alienated, outcast” boys, the use of a false fire alarm to lure victims out of the school, and the use of high-caliber rifles. While Columbine was the worst, it certainly wasn’t an isolated event, but the question asked wasn’t “why is there a continuing trend in violence at school” but “why did this happen,” this as in, this particular event, which was accompanied by shock, as if such a thing had never happened before. At least that is the way it was framed in the media. My inclination is because they wanted to frighten and alarm people with the news story, but not suggest that there is something fundamentally wrong with their society.

Additionally, the assumption by linear thinkers is that the “phenomenon” of school shootings, to look at a broader context, are somehow isolated from other manifestations of violence on American soil, like the September 11th attacks. Whenever the media does manage to piece a string of events together, it usually presents them as an isolated series of events, not tied to any other factors in society, like the recent attention to the events on our porous southern border, for example. The media gets wind of one incident of illegal border crossing amongst the dozens that regularly occur, then (to their surprise) finds out more have happened, (in line with the historical trend over a long period) and presents this now isolated block of events as an epidemic and demands that something be done about it, despite the fact that the national media paid scant attention to the regular occurrence of such events before this time. The idea is to treat the problem in a microchasm, isolate it, stir people up about it so they keep watching, then forget it about it when the next story comes along. However, just because the media stops reporting it doesn’t mean the events have stopped occurring. A historically continuous thinker would recognize this.

This brings us back to historical continuity and September 11, 2001. The September 11th attacks and the war in Afghanistan were the ultimate distraction from any domestic news. For months everything that had happened in America up until that point was completely forgotten while people were transfixed by the whirlwind and fury of attention on terrorism (another phenomenon that neither began nor ended with 9/11). Because of this, people began to get the impression that the slate had been wiped clean. We were suddenly a different country, we were told, and the wounds of the past 200 years had been healed. This was linear thinking at its worst.

A historically-continuous thinker would recognize that nothing fundamental changed after September 11, 2001. The world was the same place, only people were, for the first time in decades, really forced to look at the external events going on around them whether they wanted to or not. But people forget, and events like the LA riots, the siege at Waco and the siege in central Montana, the Oklahoma City bombing, Columbine, and the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia were thought to be “in the past” by the linear thinkers. No one would believe that any of those events would repeat themselves or have ramifications in the “post 9/11 world.” Historical continuity tells us that those events were not isolated, but part of a continually evolving paradigm, with far-reaching effects not yet experienced on a large enough scale, but still reverberating under the surface.

Early twentieth century Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset wrote: “historical knowledge is a technique of the first order to preserve and continue a civilization already advanced.” Gasset believed that knowledge of the past is necessary for any strong civilization, in order for it not to repeat the mistakes of the past. But what good is historical knowledge if you just know names and dates, but not understand the context of events surrounding them? Gasset’s solution is not to fall back into the past or annihilate it, but to accept its existence and escape from it, living “at the height of our time.” I believe historical continuity will allow us to do just that, by permitting us to see all of our mistakes and successes in their entirety, while preparing us for future challenges and historical precedent.

Ignoring historical continuity has the following consequences:

1) It creates the illusion/assumption that the aforementioned events have no ramifications into the future. For instance, the first time the World Trade Center was attacked it made big headlines, a TV movie was filmed, and then everyone forgot about it while Waco unfolded. Apparently, so did the FBI. It is not clear why the FBI ignored numerous warning signs about Islamic fundamentalists in the US, but it is interesting to note all the attention that was being paid to domestic dissenters like the Unabomber, the Branch Davidians, etc. I am not, however, saying that the FBI shouldn’t have paid attention to those issues. My point is that the habit of taking an event on its own as isolated may have contributed to a climate of opinion that another such thing could not happen again.

2) It creates the idea that ones actions happen “in a vacuum”. Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh’s stated reason for bombing the federal building was to avenge the deaths at Ruby Ridge and Waco. This surprised many Americans, if they even paid attention, because they probably thought those two events had nothing to do with each other. They just happened and that was the end of it. But for Timothy McVeigh, those events meant something. They meant, to him, that the US government was killing its own citizens and something had to be done about it. This understanding is lost on most people, who weren’t the least bit effected by what happened on Ruby Ridge. Those of us who knew no event is without ramifications, were more concerned. And the effects of the Oklahoma City bombing might yet not stop being felt. As I write this, unfortunately, someone might be plotting a similar attack. No one knows, but no one pays attention to that possibility because they’ve moved on to something new.

3) It sets up an impression that once something is “completed” there is no reason to worry about it anymore. Surprisingly, I have to give credit to the Bush administration on this point. They have to constantly remind people about the dangers of terrorism because they know how quickly people forget, and they hammer that point home as much as they can. If only the Bush administration had that mentality before September 11, 2001. Maybe those 2,986 people would still be alive. But I don’t need to appeal to 9/11 to prove my point. Because these events are seen as isolated from one another, linear-thinking people never want to connect two or more seemingly unrelated events, but the butterfly effect runs through history none-the-less. For example, if you hear on the news one day that a company has slashed 1,000 jobs, you might be concerned about it for exactly 30 seconds. If you hear the next day about an unexplained murder in the same area, you’re more concerned, but forget about it anyway. Now, TV pundits look for an explanation for this murder and find none. But perhaps the person who committed the crime was already frustrated, and then his or her job was cut, or they felt like they were next. No one but the killer knows what went on in his or her disturbed mind, but maybe the one event influenced the other. Event A or B could have influenced event C, or not. But it would be foolish not to consider the possibility. Often times people mistakenly point to the most “obvious” answer and ignore facts about an incident. They focus on one “solution” and ignore all others, as though every event has only one cause.

4) Non-continuous thinking leads to a responsive, rather than a preventative frame of mind. Often times “prevention” is really responsive in disguise, as is usually the case whenever anyone on the news mentions prevention. Responsive, for instance, is the way our police system is designed. A crime happens, and those responsible are sought after to be punished for it. Or, a crime is in progress and the police happen to be around and try to stop it. In either case, the criminal always acts first. Now, you may be thinking, you can’t arrest someone before a crime. But that idea is also just more non-continuous thinking (meaning things like pre-screening potential criminals would only stop crimes, not eliminate the reason the crime happens) Linear thinkers assume the problem is the crime itself, and not the events that led up to the crime, because they believe that all events are isolated. A preventative system, in line with historical continuity, would try and solve the problems behind the crimes. The system would find out why crimes are committed, and change the culture in response to that. It would be the same with medicine. Instead of focusing on treatment of depression, for example, they would focus on the cause of the person’s depression and try and change that. This, as you are probably imagining, would call for tremendous effort. The reason is that we as a society would have to shift our entire mentality away from linear thinking. The assumption of the average person is that there is no “cause of crime” because criminal acts are random and unrelated to other events. They simply “happen.” Or they point to one factor, such as poverty. But there are plenty of well-off people who commit heinous acts. There is no one reason, only a series of continuous events.

5) Linear thinking leads to the mistaken assuption that history is some kind of progression, and anyone who stands in “the present” assumes they are the pinicale of this progression. But who gives such things meaning? Who says what constitutes progress? The one looking backwards, the one whose interest it’s in to be ‘the best of mankind’. Those same people pull at straws when asked to explain the violence and deprivation in the world, because they believe that mankind has somehow changed for the better over the centuries. But what problem do we have today, excluding those caused by our inventions, that was not seen in ancient times? Wars, murder, insurrections, infanticide, scandles, terrorism, the abuse of power, debates over what is good and what is evil― all of it steadfastly remains. Historical continuity recognizes that the fundimental nature of mankind will not change unless we try and affect that change, no matter how ‘advanced’ the linear thinkers believe us to be. Thus, instead of just hoping history will somehow eventually drag us into a golden age, the historically continuous thinking person seeks to tackle these problems head on in a proactive manner.

There is a particular urgency at the present time to switch our cultural perception of current and historical events to the continuous mode, highlighted by the alarming lack of common understanding about the events of September 11, 2001, and the consequences of this lack of understanding. Of course, any point in history would have been a good time to start thinking of history as continuous, but since those times have passed, this is the only one in which we can enact the change.

Changing our thinking to the historically continuous mode will prevent us from making mistakes by allowing us to understand the origins of events like the attacks on September 11, 2001, and solve the roots of these events, instead of responding to them blindly with some preconcieved, baseless notions, creating fertile ground for more such disasters. As I write this, several bombs ripped through London’s subway in retaliation for their involvement in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a statement on the bomber’s website. But in a reaction typical of linear thought, the British Home Secretary Charles Clark was quoted in the BBC as saying: “there is no evidence it had anything to do with the Iraq war.” Followed by: “that’s (the bombing) not about Iraq or any other particular foreign policy issue, it’s about a fundimentalist attack on the way we live our lives.” We can see that Mr. Clark chose to ignore the stated reason for the bombings, and instead provide his own interpritation of the events, which was widely off the mark because he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, believe the two events (the bombing and Britian’s support for the Iraq war) were causally related.

Linear thinking has so far only led us to repeatedly make the same mistakes because most of us, like the British Home Secretary, refuse to believe events have a meaningful, causal interaction between each other. But if the Home Secretary’s constructed reason was true, and the bombers really wanted to attack the western way of life, why don’t they bomb Sweden, Norway, or Switzerland? I’m afraid that his line of thinking will only lead Britain to respond to the event on that wildly inaccurate basis of interpritation, and not one that takes into account the fundimentalist Islamic agenda. Instead of aproaching these problems as a totality that includes taking our own actions into account as well as correctly understanding the goals of the perpitrators, we merely put on a blindfold and swing at each problem that comes up, creating more in the process, as we hack at the hydra of history.

To solve the problems of today, we need to understand and diagnose the source of those problems, which simply cannot be done in the linear mode of thinking. I propose that our culture adopt a historically continuous view of current and historical events, so that we may build a better society founded on complete understanding and analytic depth, instead of one based on benchmarks and abstract historical analysis.

fin

The Importance of Historical Continuity in Post 9/11 America Part 1

2005-07-08T17:06:00.000-05:00

By Michael Kleen

If something struck a wrong cord with you when you read the title of this essay, you might be a historically continuous thinker. If not, the burden of this essay will be to convince you to wince when you hear such phrases. Those who use phrases like “post 9/11 America” are an example of individuals with little sense of historical continuity; they are what I call linear thinkers. They desire to isolate events from one another, in this case the attacks on the day of September 11, 2001, and treat them as benchmarks, as though the America before the event is somehow fundamentally different from the one after the event. However, historical continuity tells us that the attack on September 11, 2001 was not an isolated incident, but one event in a series of events that take place in the very same country over an always-unfolding span of time. Historical continuity does not extract this piece of time and analyze it as distinguished from events before and after, as a linear history, marking it on a timeline, would do. This viewpoint allows us to examine any historical event in context, rather than treating it as a distant object to be studied as an anomaly. Furthermore, historical continuity is not anti-linear. It is something that acknowledges the existence of linear thought and builds a new form of interpretation that prevents the mistakes of our culture’s current mode of thought.

This paper will cover the breadth of historical thinking and why it needs to be readjusted to phase out traditional historical interpretation and phase in a historically continuous interpretation. First, I will explain what the current form of historical thinking is and why it is that way, then I will explain how historically continuous thinking is superior to the current view, and finally I will outline the consequences of our current form of historical thinking, and show how historical continuity would correct these problems, as well as provide an explanation as to why there is an urgent need for such a change at this particular point in time.

I have characterized our current historical thinking in the United States as “linear”. This means that we view historical, as well as current, events as isolated points or periods on a scale of time that have little or no bearing on each other. It is linear because these events are all thought of as if on a ‘timeline’― placed next to each other in an orderly fashion, but otherwise detached from each other and the viewer. The events form a distinctive line that stretches forever into the past, and away from the present point in time, along with whoever is observing them. “… world history may be conceived of as a development in an ascending line, with retrogressions and standstills…” Karl Jaspers, a former professor of philosophy at the University of Basle, Switzerland, wrote in his book The Origin and Goal of History. He goes on to say: “Historically we see the stages of this advance, and in the present we stand at the highest point.” We can see that Jaspers is a linear thinker, and those statements perfectly illustrate the linear perspective of history.

I believe the reason we think this way as a culture is because of the distance put between historical events and the common man or woman. History is filtered through various intermediaries, until it finally arrives at the viewer, who is in a strictly observational position in regards to whatever is being reported. The viewer, safe on his or her sofa, feels no immediate effect from the event, much like they are watching a movie unfold instead of life.

The first intermediary of any event are the participants, who are always relied on to give their version of what happened, so the story can be passed on to other persons who are curious about what took place. This is the first degree of separation, and is present in any culture that has a historical tradition, whether it be oral, written, or recorded.

This is a problem because the masses of the curious are relying on the few eyewitnesses to tell them what unfolded. (These are called ‘primary sources’) But these participants are already removed from the event before they can tell their story. Inevitably, each witness’ testimony will be clouded by circumstance and biased by subjective interpretations. They can only offer a small, error-ridden account of what transpired. Even when the events are caught on video and at many different angles, the image shown will only present a 2-dimentional construction of what happened, and enlighten us little about the motivations, the variations, and the other events behind the event.

This muddled mess of subjective experience is then filtered again, by what we now refer to as ‘the media.’ In the days of yore this was the rumor mill, the oral traditions, and only later, written periodicals. Today we are presented with an almost real-time account of historical events, beamed live 24 hours into almost everyone’s living room. But the media is always picky, choosing which subjective experiences to retell, and always relying on the event participants to recount what happened. This is the second degree of separation. The media chooses which stories to tell, and which ones are ‘newsworthy.’ All others are lost to history after a number of years. Who today knows what Caesar thought as his troops crossed the Rubicon, or what Roosevelt said behind closed doors? Perhaps there was a greater conqueror than Caesar, but because a fire in Rome overshadowed his actions, he has been forgotten. The point here is that the media chooses which events to tell about, and all others are forgotten as though they never happened. “The so-called ‘sources’ of history only record such facts as appeared sufficiently interesting to record,” Karl Popper, former professor of logic and scientific method at the University of London, wrote in his book The Poverty of Historicism, “so that the sources will, as a rule, contain only facts that fit in with a preconceived theory.” Because it’s impossible to record every single event, a certain amount of prejudice is expected. But this also creates a sense that history is only blank pages, interrupted every once and a while with something noteworthy happening. This is a natural effect of our current reporting by the media, whose purpose is to filter what happens, ensuring that only a few details get fed to the curious masses.

By the time an event becomes known to the wider population, it has undergone drastic changes, being twice separated from its ‘presentness’. But the journey doesn’t end there. Once an event has passed out of the public mind ―the amount of time elapsed varies, but is usually more than a year at least― it is seized by a specialized group known as “historians.” Historians further filter out the media reports, and in some occasions, the participants, and determine which events amongst the vast sea of recorded events is worthy to be further recorded and studied. This process removes the event a third time, and ensures its place in “the past.” What emerges is a construction usually so altered and abstract that most common persons can no longer imagine ‘being there’ during the event. Those that can might be surprised if their image of the event were to ever somehow be placed next to the actual event. I can assure you that the two would be radically different, if even recognizable as depicting the same instance. Karl Popper wrote: “there can be no history of ‘the past as it actually did happen’; there can only be historical interpretations, and none of them final…” But this is only true if historians continue to selectively report events that fit in with their individual linear interpretations. Historians create the illusion of a historical progression through their interpretations, and pass that on to the wider populous. This in turn presses a belief in the masses that there are many different interpretations of history, when in fact there is only a vast collection of interwoven events that has been selectively filtered by a specialist culture.

Through this trifecta of filters, the observer, the ‘curious persons,’ is far removed from the events that take place. They begin to believe those events take place in some other time, some mysterious realm known as “the past,” which can never be made real again except through some third party like movies, plays, books or recordings of the event. But even with those mediums, the events are considered no longer reachable by persons in the present. The events are seen to have happened to ‘someone else,’ ‘somewhere else,’ and can be discarded from the memory as quickly as you can move on to the next historical curiosity.

The distance between the masses of today and historical events is greater than ever, even though our access to them has become hourly. This is because, for us, the events of the past stretch endlessly backwards in large gulfs of time hitherto unexperienced. For someone living in ancient Greece in the days of Socrates, their recorded history only went back several hundred years, not even a dozen generations. There was an immediacy, a ‘freshness’ to everything they did. But for us, and our ever-changing culture and evolving technology, our ancestors seem extremely foreign, even the ones that only walked the earth 120 years ago. There is a sense that there could be no understanding between the people of today and the people of yesterday. There is also simply more of us today. In the past, a larger percentage of the population experienced an event first hand, reducing the effects of dissemination, and making everything seem ‘closer’ because the story only changed hands a few times. For the teaming populations of today, an event involving a hundred people is so far removed from everyone else that it might as well be a pinprick instead of an explosion― in terms of the event’s effect on the general population, because less and less people personally know those involved. Thus the man or woman of today believes that events only happen to him or herself and not to anyone else, or to someone else and not to them, but never ‘with others.’ History is treated as some abstract thing without any bearing on current events, events which are seen as casually isolated from one another. It is important to note that history is not viewed this way in many parts of the world, where events from a thousand years ago are still considered relevant, and are remembered as though they happened to a close relative. Many Muslims in the Middle East still treat the crusades like they happened yesterday, while Americans would be lucky to even think of something that occurred that long ago if it didn’t appear on a test of some kind.

Continued....

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Historical Continuity, a primer

2005-07-08T14:24:00.000-05:00

What is Historical Continuity, and how is it different from Linear History?

Abbreviated from the essay The Importance of Historical Continuity in the Post 9/11 World, by Michael Kleen (2005) w/additions by the author

Definitions:

1. Historical continuity is defined as the continuation of a cycle, rather than a progression, of historical events over an extended period of time, and the recognition of those historical events as inseparably interconnected.

1a. A historical event is an event that impacts the culture of any large group.
For instance, going to the store is not a historical event, but going to a store and happening upon the cure for cancer is.

2. Linear history is a perception that history consists of a series of events on a line progressing or regressing in a certain direction, usually culminating in the belief that the current period of time is somehow fundamentally unique from and superior to any other period of time.

Historical Continuity is a way of looking at history that allows us to examine any historical event in context, rather than treating it as a distant object to be studied as an anomaly. Historical continuity is not anti-linear. It is something that acknowledges the existence of linear thought and builds a new form of interpretation that prevents the mistakes of our culture’s current mode of thought.
Our current historical thinking in the United States is what I call “linear”. This means that we view historical, as well as current, events as isolated points or periods on a scale of time that have little or no bearing on each other. It is linear because these events are all thought of as if on a ‘timeline’― placed next to each other in an orderly fashion, but otherwise detached from each other and the viewer. The events form a distinctive line that stretches forever into the past, and away from the present point in time, along with whoever is observing them. “… world history may be conceived of as a development in an ascending line, with retrogressions and standstills…” Karl Jaspers, a former professor of philosophy at the University of Basle, Switzerland, wrote in his book The Origin and Goal of History. He goes on to say: “Historically we see the stages of this advance, and in the present we stand at the highest point.” Jaspers is an example of a linear thinker, and the statements above perfectly illustrate the linear perspective of history.
Historically continuous thinkers do not recognize the existance of an "advancement" of history. History is simply 'what happens' in the world, with no special meaning. These events are all tied together, no matter where they take place. Any event, no matter how small, can effect and give rise to a larger event. There is no "evolution" of history, but merely a cycle of development in different areas of human existance. Linear thinking leads to the mistaken assuption that history is some kind of progression, and anyone who stands in “the present” assumes they are the pinicale of this progression. But who gives such things meaning? Who says what constitutes progress? The one looking backwards, the one whose interest it’s in to be ‘the best of mankind’. Those same people pull at straws when asked to explain the violence and deprivation in the world, because they believe that mankind has somehow changed for the better over the centuries. But what problem do we have today, excluding those caused by our inventions, that was not seen in ancient times? Wars, murder, insurrections, infanticide, scandles, terrorism, the abuse of power, debates over what is good and what is evil― all of it steadfastly remains. Historical continuity recognizes that the fundimental nature of mankind will not change unless we try and affect that change, no matter how ‘advanced’ the linear thinkers believe us to be. Thus, instead of just hoping history will somehow eventually drag us into a golden age, the historically continuous thinking person seeks to tackle these problems head on in a proactive manner.
The strength of historically continuous thinking lies in its application, not just in the gathering of knowledge. A continuous-thinking person with the same knowledge of historical events as a linier thinking one will nevertheless have a more complete understanding of history, and be able to place current events in a historical context. They would never find themselves asking “why did such-and-such happen,” because they would recognize the historical precedent, or at least know that he or she needed to look for one, while the linear thinking person would believe the event to be an entirely new phenomenon, devoid of any connection to the past. They might also appeal to some vague or supernatural notion to explain the event. The linear thinker is most often times taken by surprise whenever anything happens, as if that event suddenly materialized out of the blue. The continuous-thinking person would not be surprised, however, because they know that what has happened will more than likely happen again, and what hasn't ever happened before might yet happen. It all depends on the way events are played out in the world stage.
Early twentieth century Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset wrote: “historical knowledge is a technique of the first order to preserve and continue a civilization already advanced.” Gasset believed that knowledge of the past is necessary for any strong civilization, in order for it not to repeat the mistakes of the past. But what good is historical knowledge if you just know names and dates, but not understand the context of events surrounding them? Gasset’s solution is not to fall back into the past or annihilate it, but to accept its existence and escape from it, living “at the height of our time.” I believe historical continuity will allow us to do just that, by permitting us to see all of our mistakes and successes in their entirety, while preparing us for future challenges and historical precedent, while linear thinking continually leaves us in the dark.

First Post

2005-07-08T10:24:00.000-05:00

You might have noticed this blog transferred over from livejournal or have linked from www.michaelkleen.com

That is because I have recognized the potential of blogger.com to facilitate my political writing and commentary more than livejournal, which is mostly for personal things, or my website, which rarely anyone goes to.

I will try to update this blog as much as I can, and you will always find 100% pure content-- no quizes or rants about how my day went.

Michael Paine